Magnus swore. Shiny"s announcement was most unexpected, though at this point Magnus stayed focused on the danger. He doubted Telisa would be able to ignore the mention of Trilisks.
"It"s good to hear you, Shiny," Telisa said. "We"re fighting for our lives, will a.s.sist if you get us out of this."
Good call! He pulls us out of the fire; then we help the sucker.
"Battle machine outside neutralized," Shiny reported. "Enemies moving in to flank, trap, surprise you from below."
"Below us? Which direction are you? Should we make a run for it?"
"Proceed south. Will cover retreat, withdrawal, emergence from building."
Chapter 24.
Keziph scurried over the landscape rapidly. There were bipeds nearby, running, hiding, or dying. For the moment, Keziph and its broodmates were safe. It crawled into a breach in the rocks and covered under a dense group of native plants. Once safe, Keziph felt less inclined to remain in control.
Keziph prepared to change stances. Deprived of its natural body or a suitable robotic equivalent, the act was no longer effortless. It required a transition delay. And of course, there was no longer any physical component. The body it occupied merely paused for a moment.
Finally Micet came to the fore.
"The test worked perfectly," Micet told its broodmates. "Though hardly more than this Wehhid body, the newcomer species is capable of receiving us. The test subject was successfully transmitted and reset."
Micet considered the other, more complex creature that had a.s.saulted the bipeds. Its hardware was somewhat more advanced, but Micet lacked the preparation. Supersedure into that form was more tempting but carried huge risks. Micet prepared a summary for Cayach and changed stance.
Cayach came to the fore in the slow, troubled way of this body.
For the thousandth time, Cayach felt loss. Loss for its own bodies, loss for its G.o.d, and loss for its home to the methane breathers.
Cayach heard one of the clumsy bipeds stomping by within the sensitive Wehhid audial sphere. The biped cursed aloud. And Cayach instantly recognized it. The leader of the original biped explorers.
Cayach decided on a final change of plan. Rather than superseding one of the worshipers who had traveled here to serve it, a superior option stood ready: the leader of the primitive soldier beings. Its status would make the seizure of a starship simple, and would allow for a smoother transition into dominance among any others of their kind. The only problem Cayach saw would be the lack of neural shackles: its followers were free to think and act however they chose, and the recent defeat made them likely to choose desertion over obedience.
"That one. We will use that body to escape."
Micet replied slowly, submerged: "That race can only hold two of us conscious. But those two could be in-stance at once!"
It was a strange compromise. The original Trilisk body allowed all three broodmates to observe and express, though only the in-stance one could control the body, and with such control came temporary dominance. The flat, native creature allowed all three relative equal status, though they retained their accustomed mode of operation: it was second nature to switch stances and operate with one broodmate dominant at any given moment.
The bipeds were another flavor: their minds were split into halves, allowing two in-stance ent.i.ties at once, a concept half-amusing, half-horrifying to the Trilisk broodmates.
"I leave it to you two, then, to take us to the world of the Holoeum where we can find a new body and a fresh G.o.d," Cayach said. "That is our objective. I will submerge until you have brought it to pa.s.s."
Micet took control and issued the final commands. The process was almost instantaneous: Micet found himself with Keziph, together in the body of a biped.
"Really this creature is-" Micet stopped as one of its limbs moved, though Micet did not command it to do so. "Ah! So disturbing!"
"I see what you mean," Keziph said. "This could be very bad. If you interfere while I am in combat, our effectiveness will be compromised."
"We are in combat," Micet said. "There are enemies about. We should find our servants and organize them for the journey to Holoeum. Forward, Keziph," it urged. "Destroy any who do not obey."
Then Micet tried to de-stance, though it was not fully successful. Broodmates often sought to remain in-stance, and the idea that someday it would be unable to de-stance had never occurred.
Keziph felt it, too, but did not complain. It tested the biped"s arms and legs. Then it puzzled over the communication device it found in its head. It was definitely very different, very not-itself. The primitive race had only recently fused themselves to their machines. The results were less than satisfactory.
The device reported a lower-ranking companion nearby. Keziph found the other biped within the minute. It was covering behind some rocks with a few scavenged backpacks and weapons lying about.
Keziph started to communicate, then realized it didn"t have the ability.
"Micet..."
Keziph instinctually tried to change stance, but Micet was already there.
Micet supplied the words. Keziph and Micet spoke them together.
"Take what you can. We"re headed for the ship," they croaked.
"We"ve lost, Colonel," the Terran said. "They have an alien on their side. Ships in orbit. And they"ve destroyed all our hardware planetside."
"We"re taking what we have and getting onto the last a.s.sault transport."
"No, sir. It"s over."
Keziph raised his Terran weapon and shot the demoralized soldier in the head. The Terran fell back, utterly dead.
"What in the h.e.l.l are you doing? You brought us to this, and now you"re killing your own men?" came an urgent communication from another Terran. "You b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"
Keziph looked around with the Terran body"s binocular vision. The communication device in Keziph"s head identified the speaker: Captain Arakaki.
Keziph brought up the host"s weapon again.
The creature who had challenged him dove for cover. Keziph opened fire. It was as if the primitive device in Keziph"s tiny manipulators had been designed to miss. The projectiles flew almost straight from the barrel. They only angled slightly toward the prey. Once the projectiles had flown past, missing, they did not return to try again.
Keziph tossed the puny weapon away. If only its G.o.d could hear it, destroying the attacker would be such a simple thing. But it had been reduced to this.
The creature it had tried to kill was running away. It turned as it ran to point its own simple weapon at him. Keziph grasped a red rock and charged forward.
The Terran"s coherent light weapon lanced out. Keziph interposed the rock. The moisture within the obstacle heated rapidly, causing the rock to crack and pop into several pieces. Keziph turned aside to keep the incoming radiation from hitting him cleanly, but the attack was already over. The Terran weapon didn"t have enough energy to keep it up.
The Terran turned to run. It couldn"t match Keziph"s speed.
Suddenly an explosion threw Keziph high into the air. It tucked and spun, riding the shock wave gracefully.
One of its two large legs was leaking red fluid. A shard of metal was buried inside it. Keziph tried out the leg. It still worked for now, though it was weaker and the fluid continued to erupt.
The device in its skull announced medical attention was necessary. It instructed Keziph to staunch the bleeding. The primitive battle suit it wore seemed to sense the danger, and it tightened around the wounded limb.
"Are we dying?" it asked, feeling Micet was still there.
"No. The link says we can block off the wound and continue. Forget that one," Micet suggested. "In fact, forget them all. There may be a few aboard the ship eager to flee with us. The ship is this way."
Chapter 25.
Telisa and Magnus sheltered inside a Konuan building to await the outcome of the local battle. Confident in Shiny"s superior weapons, Telisa figured it was only a matter of cleanup. She did not want to get dropped by a stray round now after making it through so much. Cilreth had turned on her stealth suit and returned to the Clacker with a few new Vovokan battle drones in orbit around her.
"Cilreth may not be cut out for this," Magnus said.
"Are you kidding? She"s tough as nails," Telisa said.
"She mumbled something about staying in the ship next time."
"She"s just blowing off some steam."
"Could be. She was attacked by a native predator. It left two holes in her suit," Magnus said.
"Is she okay? We shouldn"t have let her go by herself."
"It was a close thing, but she"s not injured."
Telisa hesitated a moment, then continued. "I have an odd admission to make," she said. "In the interest of full disclosure...I may have had children with someone else while I was a Konuan."
Magnus just stared at her for a moment. "Uhm. Oh."
"It wasn"t by choice. I kept dropping these eggs from my tendrily-ventricle-thingies, and I couldn"t carry them all for long, so I hid them away. But that other one might have found them and fertilized them. Or something like that. I didn"t touch the guy, I promise."
Magnus"s eyebrows came up as she spoke. "I knew you were obsessed with aliens, but I didn"t expect you to go that far," he said, smiling a bit.
Telisa lifted her hands in a "not my fault" display.
Magnus nodded. "Okay, thanks for letting me know. I think. I, myself, did not fertilize any eggs while you were gone."
She laughed. He smiled as well, showing her he wasn"t angry.
Of course he"s not. There would be no reason to be. That was just weird.
"And that woman?" she asked.
"Arakaki. She"s UED. Or she was. She"s good. If she"s still alive, we need her."
"What?"
"We could use her. She"s tough. A survivor. We could use her on the team."
"You and three women. I see where this is going."
"Don"t be insane. She"s good. You"d agree if you would quit thinking of her as some kind of compet.i.tion. Look, we"ll recruit two or three men. You can help choose them."
"I suppose you"re right," Telisa said. "But the more people we let in, the more we risk fragmentation of purpose. We"ll have to be beyond careful in recruiting."
"Yes. Jack was good at it. He chose you. And he knew you were the right person for the job before you even heard the pitch. Thomas was like, oh no, she"s going to tell her father and we"re all going to get arrested, but you just signed on and never looked back, just like Jack said you would."
"What"s Shiny up to now?"
"We can go take a look," Magnus said. "The UED scattered. Shiny says the survivors are headed back to their camp."
"Shiny saves us yet again."
"He seems to be sticking with us. I guess you were probably right about him." Magnus said it with difficulty. Telisa accepted the statement and did not gloat.
"Let"s go find our Vovokan benefactor." She stood and checked her suit. Luckily Momma Veer had foreseen camping out on dirty, dusty worlds and provided the skinsuit with a charge-and-repel system for keeping dust from sticking.
"Maybe Veer Industries should run the Earth government."
Magnus shrugged. "Maybe it already does."
Telisa and Magnus moved toward Shiny"s position. Their link maps told them the alien worked at the site where Telisa"s human body had been in the tube. Before they arrived, they could hear digging machines. The sounds of dirt and rubble being shifted carried far across the ruins.
At least it"s not the sounds of gun and rocket fire anymore.
The pair kept sharp. Even though Shiny"s...o...b.. patrolled the area, they were afraid of being ambushed by a UED survivor. Telisa also thought again about the predator that had attacked Cilreth, or whatever might have caused the Konuan to make all those grilles. Telisa had one Vovokan attendant orb left, but both of Magnus"s were still with him, though she swore one of them wobbled like a bent tire.
The first thing Telisa saw of the destination was a deep pit surrounded by four large digging machines. The machines were built upon multiple legs like the Vovokan walkers. They approached the edge of the dig site. Telisa looked down. The top of the Trilisk chamber had been opened like a living thing, cut across and propped open like a patient"s chest in major surgery.
Two machines with long arms and crane-cable claspers loaded another body-switch apparatus into a huge transport vehicle as she watched.
Cilreth appeared nearby.
"Hi. I thought you were hiding in the Clacker," Telisa said.
"I guess my curiosity is stronger than my sense," Cilreth said.
"That"s true of all of us, or we wouldn"t be here," Telisa answered. "These devices are amazing. Though I"m not sure we want to use them. Interesting as it was to become a Konuan, I don"t think I"ll be switching bodies again anytime soon."
"I don"t know if we can sell them, either," Cilreth said.
Telisa opened her mouth to say of course we can but then stopped. In the hands of a private client, what damage could be done?
"I can"t believe it. You might be right," Telisa said. "Have I become like the world government? Deciding these artifacts are too powerful to be in the hands of a single individual?"