I"ll take apart this entire city hunting you.

Suddenly a voice addressed her link. "Neat trick. What do you want here?"

Her link was configured to only carry messages from strangers straight through if they were in close proximity. After all, anyone that close could just speak out loud if they wanted.

Arakaki jumped to one side. Placing her back to the wall, she trained her weapon on the grill to her right. Then she drew a laser from her belt with her left hand and pointed it the other direction.

"My name is Magnus. I"m hunting an alien creature. It is very dangerous. I suggest you leave right now."

"Wheretheflipareyou?" she said out loud.

"Shhh. I"m not coming out to get shot, if that"s what you want. Are you hunting me or the Konuan?"

He must be from that ship.

"The Konuan," she replied over her link. "Are you with the s.p.a.ce force? We saw you land."

"All you need to know is I"m hunting the Konuan and it"s in this building with us. I have robots stationed around the exits."

"Those little scout robots? It"s more dangerous than you think."

"Just tell me how to kill it."

Arakaki recognized that edge to his voice. The man who spoke to her was angry at it.

Like me.

"It"s fast," she said. "It can sense us from farther away than we can sense it. Hearing, I think. It has technology, too."

"It has tech? How? These ruins-"

"Are built on top of a Trilisk outpost," Arakaki finished for him. "Now that I"ve given you valuable information, how about you tell me who you are?"

Magnus materialized before her. He was a soldier. Arakaki could tell that right away. He was strong, with blonde hair. He wore Momma Veer and held an older rifle in his hands. His rifle was pointed at her heart. She doubted her skinsuit could save her at point-blank range.

Okay, well, that rifle isn"t current.

"Ex UED?" she asked quickly, hoping against hope. If he was a remnant of another unit, the out-of-date rifle would make sense. Maybe he"d had to scavenge.

"s.p.a.ce force, actually," he admitted slowly. "Though I"m no longer a soldier. And to be frank, no longer a friend of the world government."

Everyone still called it the world government, even though there were many more than one Terran-controlled world now. The words were old enough to take on meaning of their own. Politically, it was still the only world that really mattered. Other planets had large populations and healthy industries, some of which had risen up against Earth, but they hadn"t been able to resist the UNSF.

Arakaki waited for hatred to come. But she only felt sad as she chomped on the tough bit of synthetic in her teeth. Of course he wasn"t UED. Not in that huge new ship.

"That"s a big ship you guys brought. Is it full of scientists or soldiers? Or both?"

"It"s an alien ship, and we"re here to find Trilisk artifacts," he said, deadpan.

Buckle bulb? No, dammit. He has to be telling the truth.

Before she could answer, he continued, "I know it"s crazy, but right now we have the Konuan to worry about. You look like you can handle yourself. Stay if you want, but I"m blowing that thing to bits."

Arakaki"s link added a monitoring service hosted on his link. "A hack? Why should I let you try?"

"It"s the data feed from the robots I have in and around the building," he said.

Arakaki accessed the service. She saw the positions of six machines. Four waited at grilles near the entrances to the building, and two others were on a lower floor, centrally located. There was something odd about their sensor maps. They had an extra layer to the display labeled "ma.s.s map." Some kind of fancy new ma.s.s sensor suite?

He sure is trusting me quickly. Stupid b.u.g.g.e.r.

"Cross me if you want," he said, as if reading her mind. "Do it after it"s dead. You must have known someone it killed. I"m a human like you, it"s not even close. We get it first, okay?"

Arakaki nodded. "I"ll add you to my grenade signature blacklist."

"Same here," he said. "I recognize that PAW. What"s that there? Laser?"

"Yes. I don"t even know what hurts the thing. But it"s killed plenty of men with PAWs."

They listened for a minute, watching the feeds. Magnus knelt with his back against a column that ran from one side of the floor vent to the ceiling vent. Arakaki did the same, facing another direction.

"These buildings are tricky," Arakaki said. "You can see through half the building in any direction through these grilles, yet any room could have an ambusher waiting in a corner out of sight."

"I have to search. I lost a friend," Magnus said. She could hear it was true. "She"s tough. Got a lot of tricks up her sleeve. There"s a chance she"s not dead. So I have to go looking."

"It"ll kill you for sure," Arakaki said. "It knows you want to find your friend. It"ll wait for you."

"Stay here. Or help search. Up to you," he said.

He"s not going to abandon his friend. Stupid, yet admirable. "Which way first?"

"Crawl through that vent. Then we head that way. We can cover each other a bit," he suggested.

"The best we could hope for is one of us shoots the thing while it eats the head off the other," Arakaki said coldly.

"You"re familiar with it, then," Magnus said. "All I know is what you told me. It"s fast, and a hit-and-run type of creature. Has tech. Good hearing. Likes to attack the head." The man"s Veer head guard came up across the back of his head.

"It"s a Konuan, like you said. They were nasty things, fast, thin, like umbrella-shaped bats that can hang from the ceiling. When they open up, they can almost completely cover you then snap back shut. Then digest you with acid spit or venom."

Arakaki moved slowly. She didn"t plan to shoot Magnus, at least not yet, but he was still watching her.

And with good reason. I have two deadly weapons and I"m UED. But he wants his friend and he knows I can help. Or die trying.

"Acid. I guess that makes it easier to dine on any creature made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen no matter what planet it"s from," Magnus said.

"I think it just does it to kill us. Look, I was serious when I said the best we can hope for is for one of us to kill it when it kills the other one of us. I suggest stay in sight of each other. If I point my weapon at you, just duck."

Magnus nodded. "Then I have an idea," he said. "But I doubt you"ll like it much."

Telisa heard breathing. To her heightened hearing, the act involved a dozen vortices of air, slurping past lips, tongue, and throat, and sliding around bronchial tubes and the internal flexible sacs of human lungs. It was a complex, wet sound.

It"s Magnus. I can tell just by hearing him breathe. I"ve heard hints of this a million times before: listening to him exercise, sleep, and make love. There is so much more to his breathing now, but I can recognize it. I just know it"s him, even from fifty meters away through these cramped cubes and ventways. Amazing!

Someone else. Was it Cilreth? No. It didn"t seem right.

I can hear her. I know it"s a woman. But I can"t picture it as Cilreth. Too...small, too compact. Too strong. Cilreth is taller, older, slower.

Telisa was amazed at how rich an information source her hearing could be. So many details beyond what human hearing could deliver to her. She could tell how large the Terrans were, and she could hear the echoes of their movements all around, telling her where the rooms and the grilles were. The building seemed like so much more now...in fact, she realized part of its design was about carrying sound through the building by lining up the grilles in each direction. Crawling to the middle of the room let you know what was happening in the entire area, but moving off to a corner made it milder, more distant. She moved to the center of the room and listened more.

Telisa heard the sc.r.a.ping of tiny claws across stone.

It"s the other one! Here in this building. Maybe Magnus can kill it! But he wants to kill me, too.

"It"s in this building," she heard Magnus say. His voice resonated with a hundred details Telisa had never heard before.

"Yes," the female voice replied. "I have a mobile sensor suite parked outside. But don"t think we"ve trapped it here. It"s just playing with us."

"Here we go," Magnus said. Then he stopped breathing.

Here we go? Go where? What happened?

Telisa only heard the noises of the woman"s movement. She prepared the tool she had to pry out the next vent. Telisa tensed. That tool was unpleasantly abrupt and noisy. She shuffled toward the nearest corner. Still there was no sign of Magnus, as if he had disappeared.

Of course. He turned on the stealth sphere. He"s still there. She"s the bait.

The thunderclap came and went. Telisa felt relief it was over.

If they shoot their weapons, that sound might hurt, too. Five Ent.i.ties! A stunner is a sonic weapon. It would be unbelievably loud to me.

The instant Telisa realized a stunner would be formidable to a Konuan, she knew what she wanted to do.

I have to tell Magnus a stunner might incapacitate a Konuan. Might incapacitate me.

The awful sound of the grille breaker snapped through the building. Telisa ignored it. She moved out onto the wall two meters above the floor.

She moved her legs carefully, sc.r.a.ping the wall for long moments, though she worked as fast as she could.

The other will hear me clearly. Is the other my enemy right now? Will it seek me out?

She heard the sc.r.a.ping again. It was moving around the far side of them. Coming at them from behind, through the doors they had forced open.

No! Magnus, look out!

Telisa felt the thrill of the Konuan danger response: nervous legs, razor-sharp hearing, and a chemical stimulant released from a thousand tiny pouches under her outer integument. She could feel her skin tightening.

Without my link how can I warn him? He thinks we"re both dangerous! But he"s on my trail. That"s exactly what the other Konuan wants. It will kill him.

Chapter 18.

Cilreth stared at the pillars. All three opened at her command, but none seemed to hold Telisa inside. There was only the pile of green remains she thought must be a dead Trilisk.

Trilisk devices can hear and understand my thoughts. Not through my link. Just by an un.o.btrusive scan. I wonder how it is I have permission to use anything.

She stood in the center of the room, stymied. "I need a list of services," she thought aloud. "Possibilities." Her gaze fell on the green thing in the tube. She had been avoiding it, so unpleasant was its appearance and meaning. It was even uglier than the giant lobster thing that had tried to kill her.

If that"s a Trilisk body, then maybe it has a Trilisk link in it.

She walked over to the tube. She thought about how amazing a Trilisk link must be. If she had one with her, if she could use it, maybe she could use Trilisk machines from the ruins wherever she went. It could be a game-changer.

This is crazy.

She asked the inner tube to open. The clear material slid away just as the outer sh.e.l.l of the column had. Cilreth watched with growing discomfort. She waited for a bad smell. There was none. The fuzz-covered corpse sagged further as the clear barrier slipped down into the floor. Cilreth dropped to her knees next to it.

Then she began to probe through the corpse. She took out anything from her pack that might help her. A water locator and purifier. A poison detector. She looked at the remains in several wavelengths through her laser scope. Nothing she had was designed to look through an alien body. She found a medical device in her pack. One of the things it could do was locate foreign objects lodged in a Terran body. She tried it on the corpse. It showed a hundred things inside the body it thought were problems: everything from shrapnel to parasites.

Okay, that thing is obviously whacked out since it"s not looking into a human.

"Nothing left but to dig in," she said to herself. She held an eating fork and knife and stared down at the pile. "Ugh. Ugh. I can"t do this," she said out loud.

She thought again about the link. If she dug through a human body, it would take a while, but she would eventually find the link. Would the same hold for this alien corpse?

Trilisks were so advanced they probably didn"t need links. If they had them, they might have been the size of a single cell. Or all their machines read their minds, just like my link does with me, from the outside. And plants thoughts and information right back into the brain without any device?

Cilreth sneezed.

"Great, now I have some awful s.p.a.ce disease," she said, not really believing it. She looked at the pile of green fuzz again. "But what if you went on a trip? You didn"t have a link to bring with you? Internal helpers, protectors, power sources?"

Cilreth closed her eyes. Where is the link? Where is the link?

She opened her eyes. The display across the room had changed. It showed a three-armed, three-legged creature. Like the robot they had found, it was deep blue, almost crystalline. She saw subtle differences. This body was a bit rounder, softer. The body became transparent. Within the volume of the body, complex lines began to form. They crisscrossed the body s.p.a.ce like a nervous system. Several spots around the body pulsed with more light. Some of them expanded as she looked at them, close-ups of more complicated webs within.

"The entire body is integrated like a link. Or at least the entire nervous system," she said slowly. "So there"s my answer."

Cilreth dug a sample cylinder out of her pack. She looked down at the remains and scooped some into the container. Then she threw it back out. She looked at the display and concentrated on one of the most complex areas. It magnified to show more detail.

"Where? Where is that part here?"

She looked down. Part of the body glowed. She could see through it.

Cilreth reached down and carefully scooped up her sample to include the parts displayed.