Part 13 (1/2)

One shuddering breath later she looked again. She grabbed a spine and moved it a bit. The spines had hook tips, but they were caught in her suit, not her flesh. The last layer had protected her from the attack, but the biological spear hooks were caught on her suit.

She grabbed the one sticking from her chest and pulled. It was stuck firmly.

I didn't bring the d.a.m.n machete. Holy Ent.i.ties...

She did not lament long about the lack of a machete. She was still alive, and that was what was important. Cilreth came to her senses and considered her other equipment. There should be a smaller knife in her pack. She looked around for other creatures, but didn't see anything threatening. She flicked a green worm away in disgust.

Her pack slid off her back as she lay there, allowing her to search for the knife. She found the tool, then cut away the tendrils. They were strong but no match for the sharp alloy.

I should have gone back to the Clacker. I should never have left it.

The scare had been severe, but she had been lucky. She tried to calm her nerves. Telisa might still be depending on her. Once Cilreth cut herself free, she tried to work the spines out of her protection. As she worked she ran the suit diagnostic. It reported some damage but judged itself to remain 95 percent effective.

Once she dropped the spines free on the ground before her, thoughts of returning to the s.h.i.+p a.s.sailed her again. But she decided to keep looking for Telisa.

How much worse could it get? I don't want to find out.

She walked toward the next corner with her stunner in her hand. Her gaze even flitted upward occasionally, looking for anything lurking on the roof. The other wall of the building had one grille opening, but the grille was missing.

”Yes! Wait. Who did that?”

Cilreth checked over her shoulder, then took out a flashlight. She directed the powerful beam into the entrance. She saw just another ruined Konuan room. Sc.r.a.ps of cloth or paper, a few old plant stalks, and a small rock carved into something. Something with three arms and three legs.

Creepy.

Cilreth knelt down and slid through the entrance. She paused to let her eyes adjust. She examined the little statuette again.

Wait. That's important. It shows they knew the Trilisks were here. Either that, or it's a bizarre coincidence. If a child has twenty toy monsters, what are the chances one of them accidentally looks like the alien race living below her? Focus, Cilreth. Telisa needs you.

She checked her tunnel map in her link. Straight ahead. The grille that direction was missing, too.

Someone else has done this. But it looks like it was a long time ago.

She crawled through to the next room, and the next. All she saw was rotten garbage and a few old pieces of oxidized metal. She kept an eye out for more little statues, but she did not catch sight of anything similar. She came to the room above the tunnel.

The center of the room held a circular opening leading straight down. Just like where she had been separated from Telisa. As soon as she saw it, Cilreth nervously checked the ceiling. She started to shake.

Dammit, dammit, dammit. I'm such a d.a.m.n coward.

She turned her stealth suit on to calm down. It helped a bit. The suit still had a lot of juice. She decided to leave it on as a crutch, at least until it showed a third of its energy store was expended. She would use it now to get a grip, but she would make sure and leave plenty for if, or when, she really needed it.

I'm not really an explorer. I'm just a private investigator. Of the deskbound type.

Cilreth had a smart rope in her pack. She took it out with her suit's ghostly outline service turned on in her PV, to help orient herself while invisible. The rope anch.o.r.ed itself and prepared to bring her down to the tunnel below.

She took a deep breath and descended.

At the bottom, Cilreth pulled the sniper rifle off her shoulder. She activated the scope with her link and flipped through various low-light options. She saw the tunnel ahead in various frequencies of light, but none of them revealed any potential dangers.

She followed the long, smooth tunnel. She kept flipping through low-light settings until she saw a light ahead. It came from a larger room at the end. She slowed as she approached. No sounds disturbed the long tunnel.

Cilreth raised the rifle before her and took one step at a time. The room looked smooth walled and of advanced make, as if constructed of one piece of metal or plastic. There was no dust. Everything there looked brand new. The room had three pillars extending from floor to ceiling. Each column was black and silver, wide, way too thick for her to wrap her arms around. In fact, she felt threatened by the fact she couldn't see what might be hiding behind them. Two other tunnels exited the room.

Cilreth walked over to the nearest pillar. ”Telisa, where the h.e.l.l are you? I don't know anything about Trilisk stuff.”

Cilreth examined the ma.s.sive pillar. It was way overbuilt, simply thicker than a metal pillar would have to be to support the ceiling. The other three pillars were the same thickness. Cilreth carefully touched the surface. The metal was smooth but it didn't feel warm or cold.

”How can this be human body temperature? Ridiculous,” she noted aloud. She tapped the surface. Did it sound hollow? She wasn't sure.

What's in there?

Cilreth felt a vibration. There was a sound. A low humming. She stepped away.

Suddenly the top of the pillar was dropping. Cilreth realized the surface had been moving from the moment she felt the vibration, but it had been so smooth she hadn't seen it moving. In the next second the top had dropped almost to the level of her head. Cilreth took several steps back and aimed her heavy laser.

What am I shooting at?

The pillar's outer clasp continued to drop. In another couple of seconds, she would know.

A clear tube had been revealed beyond the outer wall of the column. The last bit of the sheath sunk into the floor. It was filled with...

”Ugh,” she grunted. ”What is that c.r.a.p? Green moss?”

The inside of the tube had been stuffed with a fluffy green material. The ma.s.s must have been more than her own weight, unless it was extremely light. The color was darker than the plants above, she decided. But the closer she looked, the more she realized the ma.s.s had shape.

A ma.s.sive, three-legged, three-armed shape.

By the Five!

Cilreth's hands wavered wildly. She dropped the barrel of her compact rifle lower, then looked around the room in case she had been so taken aback that something had approached unnoticed. But it was only her, her two attendant spheres, the three covered pillars, and the ma.s.sive, fuzzy green derelict in the tube.

If Telisa was running from that thing, she may have hidden in one of these. s.h.i.+t. She may be suffocating in one right now. She could be in one of the other three!

She took a deep breath and tried to gather her wits yet again. Her shaking subsided. The thing in the tube, Trilisk or not, looked very dead. Rather crumpled toward the bottom of the tube and utterly still. Had the Trilisks looked like that in life?

Cilreth walked over to another of the ma.s.sive cylinders.

”So, how did I do that?”

She touched the pillar. Then she spoke quietly, ”What's inside?”

The hum returned. The pillar was opening.

This is madness. How can the Trilisks know how to interpret the brain of a Terran and open on command? It's not like vastly different creatures across the galaxy could possibly have any universal wiring or patterns that would allow a machine to simply- This time the clear cylinder revealed was empty. It lit up with a violet outline of a human brain. The walls of the tube rotated with thousands of glowing symbols. Even as Cilreth watched, the brain pulsed with activity. She watched flashes of light dart here and there through the brain as the symbols danced across the surface of the tube.