The Celaran Probe (Parker Interstellar Travels Book 7)

by Michael McCloskey

  “I heard you have a traveling companion,” Sager said.

  “Yes... she made herself scarce.”

  “If I may speak frankly, Mr. Lonrack. The safest place for her is by your side. The press is speeding here as we speak. You’ll soon be surrounded by too many sensors for anyone to touch her.”

  “What? Why?”

  “You’re the most famous hero of the revolution, more popular than even Telisa Relachik in certain population groups,” Admiral Sager said.

  “Hero of the—” Caden started. “Wait. What do you mean, the safest place?”

  “If any corporate goons come for her, or any deranged fans of yours are looking to remove her from your life, it’ll help to have news agents all around.”

  Deranged fans?

  Caden was still digesting that when Siobhan walked into the living room. She looked troubled. Caden motioned her over. She walked up to them stiffly. Her lips compressed and her eyes darted about.

  The Admiral clearly recognized her. “Siobhan, I presume?”

  “You’re Admiral Sager. You’re supposed to be—”

  “Rumors of my demise and all that,” he said. “I’ll let you meet the family. Nice talking with you, Mr. Lonrack.”

  Caden nodded. The Admiral turned to leave, but he sent Caden a message through his link.

  “One last thing. I know some good men, ex-Force officers. You might need an escort. For your girlfriend, at least, probably yourself as well. These men come highly recommended.”

  The admiral sent Caden a pointer.

  “Thank you, Admiral,” Caden said.

  “You’re Siobhan? I’m Patrick. This is my wife Rose.”

  Chapter 10

  A long ceramic dock ran down the side of the Aegean island where Imanol had landed last time he was on Earth. Imanol did not feel much surprise; it only confirmed what he had expected: a lot had happened here since Shiny arrived in the system. Imanol hauled himself up onto a decorative shelf of rock next to the structure and let himself dry as he watched. He had activated the borrowed stealth device before approaching, so no one noticed his arrival.

  The dock station was glass and ceramic. The roof was the flat black of solar tarp. Several people moved about inside. Imanol tried to judge their duties. It looked like two of them were maintaining the boats within. He counted seven small boats and one bigger boat he imagined might hold eight people.

  Why would they need boats? The island itself is tiny. For recreation?

  Imanol tried to decide if any of those inside were androids. He expected that Shiny might not want any real Terrans on the island at all. He saw one of the men inside stumble. Could it be some kind of ultra realistic copy that made such clumsy moves to fool spies like himself?

  Imanol resolved to get a closer look. He hopped over onto the ridged surface of the ultra hard ceramic that made up the dock. It felt so dense and solid, Imanol suspected if there was an earthquake or a tidal wave, the dock would survive better than the island beyond.

  No expense spared. This place is still important to someone.

  Imanol made his way past the various boats, none of which looked more than a week old. Each one had its own small bay with a set of clear doors blocking the way to the sea outside. The docks looked clean, though he saw no robots busy scrubbing anything. Two men had a boat compartment open so they could access machinery inside. They appeared to be servicing it, though Imanol did not know anything about the electric motors within.

  A large, solidly-built man in rugged gray shorts and short sleeve shirt moved down the dock toward Imanol. He was moving slowly, but looked alert.

  No way he would be this on the ball unless he got a heads up. I must have triggered something subtle he picked up on.

  Imanol considered simply turning around and leaving the dock. Did he really need to know anything about this island?

  Blood and souls.

  Imanol looked through a transparent wall between him and the island. He saw a ceramic path leading to the center of the island. He knew any normal person would sneak through there and head straight out toward the hidden tunnel.

  That guy will be watching carefully for more anomalies. The best way to foil him will be to take the most inconvenient, ridiculous route through here. Which would be... over the roof.

  Imanol took a walkway out to the front of the dock facing the water. He walked out from under the roof and into the sun. He eyed one of the support beams holding up the roof, then started to climb.

  Once gaining the roof, Imanol tried to move quickly. He did not know what sensors might be present. Despite the vibration dampening of the cloaking device, he still tried to step softly as he walked across. At the far side, he hopped over onto a tree trunk and came down on the island side of the dock.

  The ceramic path led straight through a corridor of cleared vegetation from the dock toward the center of the island where Imanol had found the tunnel entrance the last time he was on the island. He had to decide between the vegetation of the island, the mowed area, or the concrete path. Each posed unique dangers.

  Off the beaten path is tempting, but will they have sensors out there that can see me pushing a path through the vegetation? The mowed area is clean but it could have anything. Even mines. The sidewalk could work, but it may have sensors in it and I would have to contend with foot traffic. Ah, but I could turn that to my advantage...

  Imanol waited. When he saw a man walk down the sidewalk away from the dock, Imanol intercepted the man and trailed him as close as he dared. He hoped any signs of his presence might be attributed to the authorized person.

  They walked down the beautiful walkway until Imanol could see the hillside that had held the cave. Instead of the old root cellar entrance he recalled, Imanol saw a ceramic platform with armored elevator doors. Imanol looked for sensors. They were tiny, but present.

  Security checkpoint.

  Imanol saw the same large man who had come looking around at the dock standing next to the entrance.

  That guy knows something. He must be waiting for me to go in there.

  The man Imanol had followed continued on the walkway toward the area where the house had been. Imanol saw a much larger structure in the distance. It looked more like apartments than any kind of lab or factory.

  Imanol stubbornly decided to outwait the man. He took up a position where he could lean against a stone in the hillside and waited, unmoving. The minutes ticked by very slowly, but the man remained vigilant. He was either pathologically paranoid or he had been tipped off to Imanol’s presence. Surely no one could stand like that and watch, alert, every single day? Yet he did not seem to be an android. The man blinked, scratched, and shifted his stance periodically.

  People came and went every fifteen minutes or so. It was just enough to keep Imanol from going crazy with boredom. He watched them go through the door or emerge from within. The people seemed calm. Whatever they were up to, it must be routine by now.

  Finally, the man made some kind of decision. He turned and walked away. Imanol watched the man take the smooth path back toward the dock. Before the man was out of sight, a woman became visible heading toward the door.

  Imanol suppressed the feeling it was all a trap. He saw that the woman carried two white boxes with handles, though she carried them stacked instead of by the handles. He waited until she came closer and fell into step behind her. She was short, with short black hair. Imanol stole a quick glance at her curvy body as he followed.

  I have to take a look now? Some things never change.

  When the woman came to the door, Imanol stayed close. She passed some kind of link check and went inside. The elevator beyond was large. Imanol assumed it served the role of cargo elevator as well as serving passengers. The woman appeared to have no idea Imanol stood beside her, but Imanol prepared himself for an unpleasant welcome. Being in the elevator felt tortuously confining.

  The cell they throw you in when they catch you will probably make this elevator seem spac
ious.

  Imanol was at least thankful that nothing so far had reminded him of the terror in the old root cellar and the Trilisk spaces beyond. This place had been cleaned up. He told himself none of the dank things he had encountered before could remain.

  Finally the doors opened. There were no ranks of soldiers or security machines to stun or glue him. Imanol relaxed a notch. He stepped out of the elevator behind the woman to find the passage beyond branching off in three directions. The woman walked straight ahead. He tried to estimate where he had gone before, when this was nothing but a ragged dirt tunnel and an ancient hole in the ground. With no clear options, he decided to simply follow her.

  They came to a round room with plain white ceramic walls. Two stacks of more white boxes flanked a round tunnel entrance. The tunnel was straight but long. Imanol could not make out its terminus, but there was movement within. Some kind of robot approached, but it did not alarm Imanol. The woman remained very calm.

  A machine with a dozen legs emerged from the tunnel and deposited more boxes. Imanol immediately wanted to snatch one up and escape. He just watched. The woman put her boxes on the other side from where the machine had deposited its own boxes.

  Are things coming or going? Or both? I have to know what’s down there.

  He waited until the woman and machine had left. Everything was quiet. No one else was around.

  Imanol peeked in a box. It was filled with storage sticks. Each stick had a label on it with a ‘requestId’.

  Requests... for the AI?

  Imanol knew the previous AI he had been exposed to accepted wishes or prayers from Shiny or the PIT team. Had the system changed? Requests coming in by memory stick seemed clunky and ridiculous.

  Maybe they’re detailed plans for complex items someone wants. I remember you had to know exactly what you were asking for, or else the AI took weird liberties with it.

  Imanol left the boxes to head down the tunnel. Immediately a sense of claustrophobic unease took hold. If detected here, he would have no place to run or hide. He reacted by speeding up to minimize his vulnerable span.

  Instead of light at the end of the tunnel, it became darker. He ran up to within thirty meters of the end. He saw a gray frame around the circumference of the tunnel ahead. Inside the circular frame, Imanol saw only perfect blackness.

  A Vovokan security checkpoint.

  He knew things had just gone from easy to hard.

  Chapter 11

  Telisa walked down a sandy corridor on one of Shiny’s massive ships. Vincent trailed her by three meters. The Blackvine crept from one corner to the next, finding the spots with the least light. To Telisa the whole interior seemed relatively dark already, marked only by the chaotic clusters of glowing cubes and rods that made up Vovokan electronics.

  “Broken,” Vincent sent over its link. “Repair.”

  “This place isn’t under my control,” Telisa said. “It’s not broken. It works the way the owner wants. This place belongs to Shiny.”

  She walked over a section of moving sand. It settled to a stop as she walked by. After Vincent scuttled over it, the flow continued. Other than the gentle white noise of the moving sand, there was no noise. Up ahead, the sand became tightly packed. Telisa did not know what that meant. She knew the sand floor carried away debris. What did it mean when the floor became firm?

  Shiny awaited them in a large chamber. Telisa walked boldly forward but Vincent hung back.

  Probably afraid of this bright creature, Telisa guessed. Maybe I should be afraid now, too. Shiny is Sol’s dictator. Will he act differently?

  Shiny said nothing, so Telisa spoke first.

  “I’ve returned,” she said. “The PIT team found Celaran bases, machines, and a starship.”

  “Shiny familiar with Terran convention, habit, method of stating obvious. Congratulations forwarded for successful, fruitful, productive mission.”

  She waited for Shiny to ask about his dead battle machine.

  “Artifact list examined, noted, processed. Telisa craft does not contain alien starship.”

  “We couldn’t control it, even though it was unmanned and apparently without purpose. Its colony-establishing resources were exhausted as far as we could tell. It was large, maybe a third the mass of this ship.”

  “Telisa and team unable to deliver, produce, hand over starship? Telisa’s recovery of partner, friend, lover Magnus requires—”

  “I’ll give you the location if you release Magnus to rejoin my team,” Telisa said. “Our effectiveness was greatly reduced without him. I want to go back and find the Celarans. We need him.”

  Telisa sent Shiny a pointer.

  “Shiny will consider, weigh, ponder this offer,” he said.

  Do I dare hope?

  “I have other important information I offer for free. We met a Destroyer. Like the machines that destroyed Vovok. There was only one, or we might have been killed. We need more resources, a better ship, and most of all, we need Magnus back.”

  Telisa remembered when she had first met Magnus. He was strong and exuded a confidence she could only feign. ‘A military advisor to the team’, he had called himself.

  “He has more combat experience than the rest of us,” Telisa said. “He taught me how to fight. If we’re going to encounter more of these Destroyers, we need him. He’ll construct more combat robots to support our efforts.”

  “Shiny adds Telisa’s new facts, opinions, variables to consideration process.”

  Vincent had shambled to one side of the room to investigate Vovokan cybernetics embedded in the wall there. The Blackvine started to dig into the sand with its tendrils.

  “My companion here is Vincent. We call his race Blackvine. Do you know about it?”

  “This race, species, type possesses Vovokan name,” Shiny said. “Antisocial, isolated, intractable to trade, barter, agreements. Known to be tolerated, accepted, ignored by Celarans.”

  Aha. So that’s why we found them on the habitat and the Celaran colony. If the Celarans tolerated this, then they must be peaceful indeed.

  “Surely the Vovokans were able to enslave them, too?” Telisa asked pointedly. As she expected, her barb was either ignored or lost on the Vovokan.

  “No social order, structure, framework. Atrophied tools for communication. This race not helpful, cooperative, useful.”

  “Well you have that right. There’s no place for it on my crew. Vincent has been nothing but trouble the whole voyage back. We tried to communicate, tried to cooperate, but nothing worked.”

  Telisa spoke the truth. The Blackvine had been constantly experimenting, stealing, and vandalizing things during the voyage. The rest of the PIT team had developed methods of isolating themselves and their property from the alien. Even though it was supposed to be one of the insane Blackvines, it remained reclusive.

  “Shiny can place creature in isolation for study.”

  “Study as in carve up or study as in observe?”

  “Observe, experiment, learn, then place in stasis.”

  Telisa considered the offer. Some part of her felt it was wrong to simply turn over Vincent to Shiny, but her practical side had had it with the creature. They had wasted so much time trying to get through to Vincent without success. Telisa needed to focus on the Celarans and getting Magnus back. She did not find much pity for the Blackvine. She struggled with the guilt for only a moment longer.

  There’s only so many things I can work on, so many things I can fix at once in the universe. I can’t even ask it where it wants to go, what it wants to do.

  “Okay, take it,” she said. “Though I would prefer you transport it to the space habitat with the other ones we found, I have nothing to offer for the deal.”

  Shiny said nothing, so Telisa continued.

  “I have some questions about recent events.”

  “Standing by, waiting, blocked on Telisa.”

  “Ambassador Shiny? Who came up with that one?”

  “Celebrity, activist,
thought leader Sterla Molde.”

  Telisa’s eyebrow rose. That was a more direct answer than she had anticipated.

  “You’re using the AI to make my race happy to have you as their dictator,” Telisa said.

  “Negative, incorrect, inaccurate. Shiny utilizing the system optimally. It is Shiny’s desire, plan, best interest to keep Terran population happy, content, satiated.”

  “No way. They went from screaming alien invasion to singing your praises.”

  “Terrans anxious in face of change. Change proven, shown to be, turned out beneficial to Terrans. Terrans express relief, appreciation, admiration.”

  Telisa raised an eyebrow.

  “I need to augment my team. My people will rest for a while, then we’ll go back out. I assume I have your support to hire whoever I need?”

  “Shiny pays, provides, foots the bill. Telisa explores, discovers, locates, and returns valuable technologies.”

  “Let me know when you decide about Magnus.”

  “Affirmative, agreed, will do.”

  Telisa frowned. Shiny’s synthetic voice sounded all too happy.

  Chapter 12

  Hours after everyone else had left the New Iridar, Cilreth worked to finish off her list of candidates and form a travel plan to visit all of them efficiently. A message came into her link.

  It was from Shiny.

  “Shiny observed, noted, discovered Cilreth seeks self-replacement. Possible goal to staff PIT team with new expert. Recommended course of action, investigation, inquiry: Marcant. Subject has hacked, tested, challenged Shiny electronic defenses. Indicates strong, bold, fearless curiosity and technical aptitude, capability, prowess.”

  “Cthulhu sleeps,” Cilreth said to herself. How could Shiny have discerned her purpose so quickly?

  Cilreth reminded herself how powerful the alien had become.

  So what did Shiny have to gain? Did he send her on an errand to find this Marcant, just so Shiny could eliminate him?