accessed her Vovokan sphere. She had a few canned commands available to use. She told it to sweep the room. Telisa remained in place, holding the weapon. If the sphere flushed anything out, she would be ready. The sphere took off, slipping behind the column to her left. She watched the feed through her link. The column had a few more cables or tubes on the far side, a couple of dim lights, but nothing else. There wasn’t a place for anything to hide.
The sphere continued. Telisa just stood by. She turned with her back to the pillar the sphere had checked, sideways to the tunnel. The Vovokan sphere revealed another smooth blue tunnel, also dark, leaving from behind the second pillar. Then another from behind the third pillar.
So the room is roughly square, but I’m at the intersection of three tunnels.
“I wish I still had two guardian spheres,” she said aloud. She thought of prayer machines again, but she dismissed it. She had already tried that just above.
Ah, but the Trilisks might have wanted it for themselves and screened it from above, just as Shiny kept the AI he found from working in his enemies’ houses.
“I want a knife,” Telisa said. She knelt down and placed her pack on the ground. She imagined a solid, shiny metal blade and a soft rubber handle. “I really need a knife in my pack.”
She glanced down the tunnel again, saw nothing, then opened her pack. She found only her supplies inside.
Dammit. I’ve been forever spoiled. I’m going to travel all over the galaxy and every now and then try a prayer and see if it works! I can see how humans got hooked on this stuff.
She replaced the alien weapon on her back. Then she clutched the breaker claw in one hand and her smart pistol in the other. Her imagination brought up an image of the Trilisk machine they had discovered…the trilateral symmetry and its dark sapphire coloration.
If those machines are running, then what if robots are, too?
Telisa froze and just listened for a moment.
What if I accidentally kill a Trilisk robot with the breaker and cause an interspecies incident? Or at least a species to robots-of-extinct-species incident…
Telisa pushed down the negative thoughts and simply examined the room as the Vovokan satellite lazily floated around her. The columns had no manual controls. Typical of Trilisk machines. The center of the room was raised in a circular shape, a kind of low dais only a small step above the rest of the floor. The floor was clean, too clean. Some kind of system had to be in operation to prevent the accumulation of dirt or dust.
Always they have these columns. And almost nothing else. No bedrooms, bathrooms, meeting chambers, nothing to really tell me more. The robot we found is an exception. I wonder if the space force ever found one. I wonder if it’s actually a dead Trilisk cyborg.
Telisa felt a stab of guilt. She had no idea if Cilreth was still alive, if the monster was still coming, but here she stood, wondering about the Trilisks. She decided she had to choose a tunnel and try to get back.
Telisa stepped onto the dais. Suddenly she felt light-headed.
“Wha—”
She lost her balance and collapsed.
Chapter 11
Holtzclaw walked through the haphazard clusters of alien buildings behind his men. The surface of his battle suit maintained the broken red color of the rocks and walls around him. He was in constant communications with his surveillance team, the Hellraker operator, and his mission group.
His battle suit was simply a powered exoskeleton mated to a military grade skinsuit and a helmet. It increased his mass by about 50 percent, but that was not a problem moving across the hard, rocky landscape. Originally the battalion had an exoskeleton only for each officer, squad leader, and the heavy weapon operator, but almost all the men had them now. One of the few advantages of heavy attrition of the unit: the exoskeletons had survived more often than the men had.
“Any activity back at their ship?” he asked. Though he could see the ship in one of the panes of his personal view, he relied upon his men to sift through details and notice things he would miss while his attention was divided.
“Quiet. Something’s not right about it, though. This ship is nothing like I’ve ever seen.”
“It must be some fancy science mission one-off,” Holtzclaw said.
“Yes, sir. You got the fancy part right. It looks like it took some serious landing