Free The Trilisk Ruins by Michael McCloskey Page B

missed. Telisa didn’t like the idea of just walking through to
see what happened. She valued her life a little more than that.
After a few more moments Magnus stepped back from beyond the
field.
    “ Come in here. You’re not
going to believe this.”

Chapter Six
     
    Another automatic door opened before
Joe. He peeked into the room.
    “ More of the same,” he said.
So far he and the two Series Sevens had traveled perhaps a hundred
meters into the complex, searching for inhabitants. He had found
room after room of labs, meeting areas, supply closets, and other
mundane facilities, but no people.
    Joe checked the services that were
broadcast to his link chip from the building. There were two
general information ports and a maintenance port available. So far
all of Joe’s attempts to link to the installation’s services had
resulted in odd errors after very short interactions.
    He tried again, connecting to the
maintenance port. A menu came up in his mind’s eye, showing local
water, power, and atmospheric controls. Further access was
restricted, and he didn’t have valid identification codes to
continue. He unlinked from the maintenance port and tried another
general information one. Joe requested the route to the nearest
restroom. A map came up of the local corridors, showing the path in
red. He panned the map view slowly to the right. The image wavered
and the link was broken.
    “ The information computers
are hopelessly trashed,” Joe complained. “Two, have you had any
luck getting maps of this place?”
    “ I do not have sufficient
access to get that information. I have multiple errors logged as
well. The system is highly unstable.”
    Joe was frustrated, but he came to a
decision.
    “ Let’s get back to the
entrance. This is an amazing place, we should report it. Its
presence here proves that someone beat the UNSF to the punch. In
fact, now that I think about it, that explains the ship we
encountered. I wondered how they got here so fast. But the truth
is, they may have been here all along.”
    Joe knew that people resisted the world
government, formed secret societies and rebel groups, but he had no
idea that they had these kinds of resources. To scout out a Trilisk
planet before the UNSF and to create a base here... they were
stronger than he realized. Then another thought occurred to
him.
    “ Hrm, I may be making some
bad assumptions here. Maybe this is a UNSF base that I don’t have
clearance to know about. But that means Mailson must not know about
it either, or he wouldn’t have sent me.”
    The robots listened to Joe’s
suppositions without comment. Joe turned back and retraced their
route through the underground complex. He led them through a series
of rooms and walked down a flight of stairs. They exited the
stairwell and walked down a long corridor. Joe slowed, looking back
over his shoulder.
    “ One. I’ve become
disoriented. Where’s the entrance?”
    “ We are at entrance
location. The door has been obscured by a new wall,” the robot
said.
    “ A new wall? Two, do you
agree with this analysis? Someone built a new wall
here?”
    “ This is the entrance
location. However, there is no evidence to support the theory that
this is a freshly constructed wall. It may be that a wall
constructed at an earlier time has been moved to obstruct the
exit.”
    “ Wonderful. But how do we
get out? Maybe we’ve been fooled into thinking this is the same
spot,” Joe said. He reached his hand out and felt the wall. It
seemed solid.
    “ Something could be
interfering with our inertial sensors,” Two said.
    Joe nodded. “Let’s test that idea. Two,
return to our deepest point in the complex and then walk back here.
See if there’s any discrepancy in the inertial navigator
readings.”
    Two tramped away dutifully. Joe stood
thinking as he waited for it to return. After a minute there was a
scraping noise, and Joe saw that the orange creature on One’s leg
was beginning to move downwards on the