The Trilisk AI by Michael McCloskey

them.”
    Cilreth
shook her head. “I doubt there is one. If Telisa and crew are paying their
bills and not causing a problem, there is no reason to send out a person to
hassle them. Also, if someone has a tracking key and we pressure him, the first
thing he’ll do is wipe the key from his link with just a thought. He knows he
can always return to headquarters and get another copy once he’s out of danger.
We need to get access to the crime organization’s most trusted storage.”
    “Maybe
we could cause a huge debt to appear for them, one they couldn’t pay off, then
find the guy sent out to harass them, and follow him incarnate.”
    “I
don’t like that because it makes them hunted by the F-clave as well as the
government,” Relachik said. “For now, divide and conquer. Step one is finding
out where that storage is.”
    “Finding
it incarnate may be just as dangerous as snooping around it through the
network.”
    “Once
I’m done with these guys, they’re not going to be dangerous to anyone,”
Relachik said.
    Cilreth
wondered if she’d signed on for the wrong job. Then she shrugged. The twitch
is already killing me anyway.
     
    ***
     
    Cilreth
appeared beside Arlin and Relachik in the simulation. It was set up to present
them with what they knew of the situation on Brighter Walken. This was their
first practice session focused on the objective of finding the F-clave
headquarters.
    The
sun was very bright. Cilreth summoned up a pair of heavy shades. Just ahead lay
the target building, a two-story frontier shack of plastic and metal.
    “Okay,
there’s Frankie’s club, the Vain Vothrile. Hadrian works in there. He’s usually
in the back,” Relachik said, mostly for Arlin’s benefit, since Cilreth had
gathered most of the info.
    It’s
probably good for me to hear it all again, too , Cilreth thought. Besides I didn’t
dig into the info very deeply. Relachik’s a monster for detail; he probably
learned a lot more from it than I did.
    “So
let’s just go in there, close the club up, and have a little talk with
Hadrian,” Relachik said.
    “How
can we disable the club’s defenses?” Arlin asked.
    “Cilreth,
can you do it?”
    Before
Cilreth could answer, Arlin snapped his fingers.
    “Wait.
Maybe this is another clever way to use our remoras!” he said.
    “Maybe.
Or maybe that’s more attention than we want,” Relachik said. “I was also going
to have the club turn new customers away once we got in there. If everything’s
broken it won’t work.”
    “I
can close it down. A place like this won’t have top-notch security. Unless this
is the F-clave headquarters, which I’m sure it’s not. It’s just too small.”
    “I
thought you said you were a searcher, not a hacker,” Relachik said.
    “I’m
not a real hacker, but you hardly have to be a genius to shut a dive like this
down,” she said. “I got this one.”
    “Okay
then, let’s hit it.”
    They
walked into the club. The place was decked out with drink and drug ads,
pictures of suave spacemen and women, and services offering lists of
sporting-event feeds. It was an assault of sight and sound. There was an
incarnate dance floor and a dozen virtual ones run as services from dozens of
booths. A long bar dominated one wall, with doors there that opened into the
back of the club.
    Cilreth
found it mildly interesting, having never been in such a frontier dive before.
It smelled considerably worse than a virtual core world club. But the
grittiness that came with its incarnate charm carried some dark, dirty appeal
that surprised her. Perhaps it was the danger. A virtual club came with little
or no risk, whether it was inhabited by bots or real cyber-visitors.
    Relachik
took one look at the busy bar, filled with people dancing, drinking, and making
out. “Not gonna work. I’m taking us back to opening time.”
    The
figures in the club flitted in high speed then disappeared. Now, only two
patrons were inside, just arriving at the