Parker Interstellar Travels 4: The Trilisk Hunt Read Online Free PDF Page A

perhaps her brother.
    “Yes,” Maxsym said. “All of
you?”
    “Yep,” the shorter man said.
“I’m Imanol. You look like you’ve come a ways. You’re not in Kansai anymore,
Blondie.”
    “Kansas. Dorothy.”
    “What?”
    “Nothing. I’m Maxsym. From New
New York,” he said.
    “I’m Caden, from Earth,” said
the young man.
    “Caden, Imanol,” Maxsym
repeated. He looked toward the other two. “May I ask your names?”
    “Siobhan,” said the woman. She
smiled. Maxsym noticed her limbs were folded uncomfortably. She would be very
tall when she stood up.
    “Krellis,” said the last man.
He did not smile.
    “So, if you’re like us, you
don’t know very much about this job,” Caden said. “No one even knows how many
openings are available.”
    Maxsym nodded. “I’m largely in
the dark as well, but I got the feeling that I wasn’t competing for a position,
but being offered one if they could persuade me.”
    Caden accepted that opinion
without comment.
    “That’s the way it was with me,
too,” Siobhan said. “They were selling themselves hard. Sounded like they
wanted me to join them pretty bad. I’ll be a little pissed if it turns out
we’re all competing for the same position. But at least they paid for the
trip.”
    Maxsym nodded again. “I guess
we’ll know soon.”
    Maxsym settled in for the
takeoff. The old transport left the frontier port and headed into space.
    The young man, Caden, seemed
unwilling to pass the time in silence.
    “I’m a new graduate. I was
headed for New Annapolis, but I’m considering this job instead. What skillset
do you have? It might tell us a lot to share what we do. All the same sort of
stuff?”
    “I am a xenobiologist,” Maxsym
said.
    “Wow. Okay, that’s radically
different than anything I can do,” Caden said.
    “I’m an industrial automation
specialist,” Siobhan said. “So it’s looking better for all of us getting a job
all the time.”
    “I’m a security specialist,”
Imanol offered.
    Everyone looked to Krellis.
    “Ex military,” Krellis said.
    Ah. Krellis does sound like a
last name.
    There was another pause. Once
again, Caden started talking.
    “So what can you tell me about
life on the frontier? Is it as dangerous as it seems to us core worlders?”
    Imanol and Siobhan traded
looks. Imanol said, “Just be courteous until you learn your way around. ‘An
armed society is a polite society’, you know?”
    “Sounds familiar,” Caden said.
    “I’d tell you to stick with
your friends, but looks like you have none here,” Siobhan said.
    Krellis surprised Maxsym by
speaking up.
    “Get yourself a weapon. Keep it
strapped here to your chest, where they can see it but can’t steal it. Then pay
attention to people around you. If you’re pissing them off, notice that fact
and back off,” Krellis said.
    Maxsym wondered for a moment if
Krellis was saying that Caden was pissing him off, but Krellis did not seem
angry, just gruff.
    “Okay, thanks,” Caden said.
    “Your colorweave will crap out
in a few days, and replacing it out here is expensive. Get something that lasts
longer,” Siobhan said. “Plus that way, you won’t stick out so much.”
    “The government isn’t here to
tell you to strap yourself in,” Imanol added. “So you have to be observant and
cautious, all on your own. For instance, on this old dump, if you mistook the
airlock for the head, there’s a nonzero chance it would actually let you step
right out of the damn ship without so much as a link warning.”
    Krellis and Siobhan laughed. After
that, the conversation died down again, and for once Caden did not revive it.
So they rode the rest of the way occupied by their links. As they approached
their rendezvous, Maxsym was not able to learn as much about the ship they were
meeting as he expected to. All he got a hold of was an exterior visual feed,
which showed a strange, almost spherical ship headed toward them. As it
approached, it continued to grow until