Read The Trilisk Ruins for Free Online Page B

liquid dissolved the
foam and the hatch opened. Telisa discarded the breathing mask and
carefully made her way out. Her workout suit was wet, but she
ignored the discomfort.
    The four crewmembers gathered around
the galley. Everyone was wet from a foam wash. As a group, they
reminded Telisa of a bunch of shipwrecked rats shivering on the
shore of a deserted island.
    They all linked into the computer and
Thomas brought up a display of the sensor readings that the ship’s
systems had obtained during their stressful landing. He used a
mental interface to the machine to indicate spots on the virtual
map.
    “ You can see the ruin sites
to the north and west,” he pointed out, as the sites he referred to
blinked in red on the display. “But what really interests me is an
installation up in the high ground to the east. I picked up a power
source there, and was getting some pretty weird readings from
it.”
    “ I don’t know what the hell
you think we’re going to do,” Telisa said. “You were paying
attention when the space force tried to kill us, weren’t you? Do
you think they’re just going to let us go now? They’ll be here any
time now!”
    Magnus spoke up in Thomas’s
place.
    “ No, we actually will have
some time. We may as well continue as best we can.”
    Telisa was perplexed. She turned her
wide-eyed stare to Thomas. “What? Is that true?”
    “ I’m equipped to screen us
from orbital detection. We fired off several electronic
countermeasure modules before entering the atmosphere. I think
their jamming window was wide enough to hide us. The chances are
good that they don’t know the location of our landing site. They
might not even know that we landed for sure.”
    Jack stepped up beside
Magnus.
    “ Although I admit that this
is one of the worst things that could have happened, we still have
a fifty-fifty chance to make it out of this. I’m not going to just
give myself up. We can go and check this place out, and get some
artifacts. Then if the ship hasn’t been found, we might be able to
make our way out without being detected,” Jack said.
    Telisa was speechless for a moment.
Then she said, “They know someone’s here though. They’ll bring in
more ships.”
    “ That’ll take time, probably
weeks,” Magnus said. “There probably aren’t many security people in
system. It’ll mostly be scientists. There’s a chance they might not
even come after us.”
    “ We’ll probably have to sell
the artifacts somewhere else though,” Jack conceded. “The best
prices are on Earth, but it’ll be too risky to try and bring them
in for a long time.”
    “ If they do come for us...”
Telisa started.
    “ None of us will ask you to
do anything but defend yourself,” Jack clarified. “I understand
that you didn’t sign up with us to kill UNSF people.”
    Telisa nodded weakly. “Okay... so we’ll
look for artifacts and hope for the best,” she said. She didn’t
feel as confident as she tried to sound.
    “ How far is the anomalous
site?” Magnus asked.
    “ About sixty-five
klicks.”
    “ We’re going to be walking
it too, if you’re serious about avoiding detection,” Telisa said,
getting drawn in despite herself. Her excitement returned as she
thought about the Trilisk artifacts again. “How large a power
source did you detect?”
    Thomas smiled as her enthusiasm
returned.
    “ Enough to power a small
city,” he said. “I’m thinking it’s military. Just the kind of stuff
we need to get filthy rich.”
    “ How much you wanna bet four
aliens aren’t going to pass security?” Telisa said.
    “ Yes, but we’ll only have to
deal with the purely automated stuff. This civilization’s clearly
dead, there probably won’t be any Trilisks around to oppose
us.”
    Telisa raised her eyebrow. “Probably?”
she asked. Humans had never encountered a live alien of any race.
The ruins of three different races had been discovered, but they
were from ancient times and were no longer around.
    “