Parker Interstellar Travels 4: The Trilisk Hunt (21 page)

“Cilreth. Can anything out
there see Magnus?”

“One or two?”

“Cilreth,
is Magnus out
there?
” Telisa urged.

Cilreth heard the anguish in
her voice. There was a long pause. “Telisa, I’ll tell you the instant we pick
up his signature.”

Telisa went for the door.
Imanol intercepted her.

“Not you, too! Stay in here
until Shiny cleans up.”

“Siobhan just jumped out!”
Telisa said.

“Siobhan is a loon,” Imanol
said. “And she has the special soldier. Magnus said to trust him. We can’t find
him out in all that.”

“We have a hit. A scout is
bringing him in,” Cilreth said. “Brace yourselves. He’s not responding.”

Telisa jumped for the doorway.
She looked up into the smoke-filled sky. Several machines were flying around,
but she did not see a machine coming with Magnus. Then she saw a scout had
landed nearby, but it did not have Magnus with it. The machine walked over to
meet her and dropped its payload at her feet.

The machine had the remains of
his Veer suit. It had been sundered in several places. It was covered in burned
blood.

Telisa fell to her knees and
released a cry of anguish.

“It has to belong to Magnus2,”
she said.

“I’m sorry, Telisa,” Cilreth
said. “That belongs to our Magnus.”

Telisa covered her face with
her hands and collapsed forward onto the suit. A part of her mind registered
the sounds of combat, Imanol and Maxsym’s voices behind her, and Cilreth’s
voice over the link, but Telisa did not care about any of it.

Magnus is gone. And he’s never
coming back.

She felt nothing but pain, and
she wanted to die.

Chapter
27

Caden hunkered in a nook of the
building’s irregular exterior. The niche adjoined two surfaces, one of which
faced the target building only half a kilometer away. He brought up his rifle
and scanned, looking for Caden2.

The bastard has my tricked-out
sniper rifle too
, he thought.
It can spot potential targets
faster than this weapon.

The weapon scanned for twenty
seconds without spotting Caden2 before one of his attendants exploded before
him. He felt pieces of it hit his Veer suit on the shoulder and arm. He heard a
sound that made him believe another fragment may have ricocheted off the wall
nearby. He sheltered and scanned for damage. Nothing penetrated the rugged
material of the military-grade suit, but it meant his enemy had acquired him.
He took a deep breath and waited for his heart to slow back down.

“Have you spotted him?” Arakaki
transmitted from the other side of the building.

“No, but he knows where I am,”
Caden reported glumly. “Lost an attendant.”

After a few moments, Arakaki
transmitted again. “I got a shot at him. He’s moved,” she said.

“Probably just waiting for us
to jump.”

Caden put his rifle out again
and tried to sweep the target building. As he scanned, Arakaki sent out a
message to the team.

“This is Arakaki. Caden2 moved
into the building. Without attendants, he just can’t sit there and let us take
shots at him.”

I hope that’s right.

“I have an attendant over
there,” Arakaki told Caden. “It helped me to acquire him.”

I should have thought of that.
But it means Arakaki has one less attendant to protect herself.

Caden heard and felt the rumble
of an explosion. The PIT machines started to attack the building. Caden let his
rifle scan the building, but he still did not pick up Caden2 or Magnus2.

“Enemies from above. The polar
axis,” Cilreth said.

“How can we get across?” Caden
asked Arakaki. “The attack is about to start! And more enemies coming in.”
Caden saw a Vovokan walker fly by with its legs tucked behind it. Missiles
launched from its flanks toward the attacking Blackvine machines.

“What better time to go?
There’re a lot of targets in the air,” she said.

That depends on whether we win
or lose the battle.

“He’s waiting for us to jump. I
know it,” Caden said.

“All right, I have an idea,”
Arakaki said. “I’m going to attach my two grenades here to two attendants.
We’ll send those out after him, and both of us jump when the robots land at the
building.”

“And what if the grenades are
still around when I arrive at the other side? They’ll target me.”

“I’m coming too. I’ll
deactivate them.”

And if you don’t make it…
He
debated trying to talk her out of the jump.
She would not listen
, he
decided.
Here comes our attack.

“Okay,” he said.

The robotic army sailed toward
the target building. Caden saw Arakaki’s grenades show up on his tactical
though things were too busy for him to spot them visually from his position. A
rain of ill-targeted projectiles came down around him. He kept as low as he
could. His attendants only had a small area to defend.

Smack.

One of them knocked something
away.

“Jump now,” Arakaki said. Caden
obeyed without thinking it through. He crouched against one wall facing in
roughly the right direction and heaved off. He would have to rely upon his
attendants to get him across alive.

As he sailed out, the first
thing he felt was fear. There were so many robots in the sky. But he saw on the
tactical that they were almost all friendly ones. They seemed to have a strong
numerical advantage this time.

We must have broken their back
in that last fight.

He spotted Arakaki flying the
same way by referencing the tactical. She had her arms back like a delta plane,
with her legs straight back together, her toes pointed back. She looked like
one of the dozens of space force advertisements he’d seen, a fit woman of
action, an icon of the force, the pride of Earth. Arakaki was that ideal
personified.

I like her.

The thought came to Caden in a
sudden, irrational burst. He only let himself think on it for another half
second and then returned his attention to where he flew. An attendant nudged
his shoulder while another pressed on a foot. Caden and Arakaki flew forward
toward the same spot on the building ahead, near a door.

Clack. Zing!

One of Caden’s attendants
intercepted another projectile beside him. Then a couple of them gave him some
braking as he neared the destination. He landed first, with a practiced ballet
of realignment followed by a hefty collision with the surface. The air expelled
from his lungs with a grunt.

Ouch. Got moving pretty fast
for that one.

Arakaki landed just as hard
nearby. Caden counted her attendants.

Only two left.

Arakaki retrieved two grenades
from the ground as they rolled up to her.

“No luck with these.”

He stepped forward to the door.
She did not say anything, probably because she could see he still had four
attendants. He pressed the trap door open with a foot to let an attendant
inside. The feed from the spy showed him only empty rooms beyond.

“Going in,” Caden told her over
his link.

Arakaki sent a nonverbal
acknowledgement. Caden went through headfirst. Once mostly through, he simply
fell gently back and let a local gravity field take hold in a backward
somersault. The other side of the door was now at his feet. With his new
orientation, he assessed the danger.

“Two doors, three windows,” he
said. Arakaki came through. He sent the attendant through one of the doors. He
wanted to send a grenade on patrol through the other way, but what target
signature could he use? He couldn’t lock himself out of the potential target
list without making the grenade harmless to Caden2. He took the weapon out
anyway and sent it out. Even if it would not blow Caden2 up, at least it could
scout.

“There are a couple of
friendlies in the area,” Arakaki mentioned.

Caden saw them on the tactical,
a couple of soldier machines. “He had to go through this way, then?” Caden
said, sending the attendant through a twisted path that avoided the machines.

“Who knows?” Arakaki sent back.

Caden followed the path of the
attendant. They stayed alert even though it seemed impossible to avoid
detection anywhere nearby.

“He might loop around and come
in the door behind us,” Caden thought on the channel.

“He’s wearing us down. He’ll
always stay ahead and take the shots back at us until we don’t have any
attendants left,” she said.

They came to a long corridor
through their end of the building. At various spots one or two of its walls
were missing to open off into rooms in all four directions.

“This is a good place for an
ambush,” Caden noted, moving very quietly.

Krumpf!

Suddenly the world bucked
around Caden. He flew into a side bank filled with Blackvine junk. A bunch of
thin, hollow tubes made of something like balsa wood shattered as he flew
through them.

“What the hell?” Caden yelled.

“Some kind of explosion.”
Arakaki spoke the obvious. Caden checked the tactical. The building they were
in had split almost in two, and it was on fire.

He regained his balance. There
was still a loud rumbling from somewhere outside. Green liquid dripped out of
the shattered ends of the tubes.

“He’s left the house!” Arakaki
snapped.

Caden did not know what feed
Arakaki had used to spot Caden2, but simply asked, “Which way?”

“Follow me.”

“You only have two—”

“Yes. Fine. You jump after him
first. Don’t ask if we’re jumping after him or not because this damn place is
coming apart around us.”

Caden wobbled after Arakaki as
she ran out of the room. He slowly regained his footing over the next few
seconds.

He may have jumped because
another explosion may be rigged to blow up this section any second now.

Arakaki reached a door and
pointed at it. Caden saw a marker for Caden2 up on the tactical. Caden leaped
into the door and forced it open in one motion. Then he braced his feet on the
frame and launched off into the air.

Caden2 had almost arrived at
the next house. But there was a window of opportunity.

I’ve never shot in the air
before. Here goes nothing.

Caden pointed his weapon and
acquired Caden2. Then he let the rifle fire.

Booom!

The kickback had little effect
on his own speed, though an attendant had to correct a slight spin.

Caden2 changed course in
midair. Caden could not tell how he had done it without attendants.

“Did you hit him?” Arakaki
asked.

“I doubt it. I think he has
some device to alter his course. Maybe a Blackvine gadget.”

Caden2 landed on the building
and sought cover, so Caden fired off two more rounds.

Booom. Booom.

Then return fire started to
come in.

Zing. Smack!

One attendant deflected a
projectile, then another took a hit and whizzed off in a spiral, fatally
damaged.

He’s better than me. Got that
shot off, and I’d be dead except I have the attendants and he doesn’t.

Smack.

“Dammit!” Arakaki said behind
him.

“You hit?”

“Lost another attendant,” she
said.

“That building is small. He’ll
move on through,” Caden said. “We can fly around.”

“Okay.”

Their attendants veered them
around the building ahead. Caden fired two more rounds at it without acquiring
a target. Arakaki fired into a couple windows with her laser. The house started
to smoke.

We’re shooting up the habitat.
These Blackvines will hate us—if they don’t already.

Caden suddenly wondered if they
had killed any of the creatures. He felt regret, but it did not stop him from
holding his rifle ready.

If we kill the Trilisk or
capture it, I bet we’ll be doing them a favor.

“Unholy Cthulhu, what is that
thing?” exclaimed Arakaki.

A giant machine appeared from
behind the building. Caden stared with wide eyes. It resembled nothing so much
as a giant gaping mechanical mouth. Two opposing apparatuses held spinning
metal teeth descending into a maw between them with additional grinder-like
spinners set inside the narrowing space between them. It was not large enough
to consume the building whole, but it could probably tear the entire thing to
shreds.

“A house grinder?” Caden
hazarded.

“You’re right. Some kind of
floating house demolisher!” Arakaki agreed.

Zing. Crackle.

Her last attendant exploded.

“Dammit!” she said aloud. Her
voice sounded stressed. “He’s on that thing!”

“Get behind me!” he told her
urgently. At the same time, he directed his attendants to get him out of line
with the mouth. He altered course enough to send him around the danger, then he
swooped down to land on the side.

There was no artificial gravity
to hold him to the machine, so he grabbed onto a ridged surface and a bar of
metal on its side. The spinning mechanism of the grinder-mouth was dangerously
close. Caden knew his copy would try something. He let go with one hand and brought
up his rifle with the other.

A grenade came around the metal
hinges in front of him. Caden knew he could not dodge. He fired his weapon,
hoping it could acquire the incoming danger, but it was an attendant that
intercepted it. The grenade exploded.

Blam.

The blast buffeted Caden into
the spinning grinder of the huge device.

Smack!

He expected an instant death,
but his Veer suit distributed the first strike across his entire back, bringing
it to the level of a sharp slap across his backside. He felt something sharp.
Probably one of the sharp teeth of the debris buckets had bitten through his
protection.

Still alive. But if I’m drawn farther
into the machine—

Caden tried to roll off the
sharp bucket that had smacked into him. He felt something tear as he broke
free. Through the adrenaline blur he could not tell if it was part of his suit
or muscles in his back.

The grinding noise became
louder.

Get… out… now!

Caden got a leg under him and
tried to jump one-legged. Then he was spinning away. The sharp buckets turned
inward toward the maw of the device.

His attendants pinned him
against the outside of a metal fender on the other side of the machine’s mouth.
Somewhere along the rough ride, he had lost another attendant sphere.

“Move toward the top,” Arakaki said.

She doesn’t have any
protection. The next shot could kill her.

Caden climbed toward the end of
the machine he guessed she would call the top. There was a tall, round cockpit
with about a dozen windows across its front.

“What is this? Some kind of control
tower?” asked Caden.

“I don’t know, but he’s in
here. Keep your finger on the trigger.”

Caden wondered about her
phrase. What did the manual fire trigger have to do with anything? He would
fire with his link, of course.

“You want me to go manual?”

“No. Never mind. Stay alert.”

“I see an entrance here. Going
in,” Caden said. Arakaki scrambled closer, almost flying off the surface of the
machine.

“Take one of my attendants,” he
said.

“No. You’re going in first;
you’ll need them,” she ordered.