The Celaran Refuge (Parker Interstellar Travels Book 8)

by Michael McCloskey

  Magnus looked out at the edge of the jungle. A swarm of shining machines flooded out of the vines. The fence before them melted.

  “Hit the deck!” yelled Magnus, pushing Agrawal down with him. They fell down onto the flat hexagonal pane of the roof section they were on, shielded by the slightly raised area they had set up against.

  “I know it’s dangerous—” Agrawal started to protest from his prone position.

  “If you want to do the most good, or if you at least feel compelled to follow orders, then get your grenades out, NOW!” Magnus said.

  Agrawal obeyed. They each took out three grenades.

  “We’re too far up, I think,” Agrawal said. “That paving substance is pretty hard.”

  He referred to the hardtop below. The grenades were reasonably tough, but the fall was substantial. Their self-propulsion mechanisms might fail after an impact like that, leaving them unable to close on the enemy.

  “Tell your attendants to deliver them to the ground. I assume you already have the target sigs loaded.”

  Magnus’s three attendants each snapped onto one of his grenades, then flitted away. Two seconds later, Agrawal’s did the same.

  “How do those things clamp onto the grenades so firmly?” Agrawal asked.

  BLAM!

  One of the grenades went off right over the edge of the building, cutting off Magnus’s answer. The two PIT soldiers were armored, and the building took the brunt of it, but the concussion and the smoke got their full attention.

  “Ug... I don’t know, something electromagnetic,” Magnus said.

  “Nice trick! Those little Vovokan contraptions can do a thousand things. Scary how smart they are.”

  Magnus agreed. He had become addicted to having the attendants around, so much so that he had forgotten how creepy it really was to have the alien attendants orbiting him at every moment of his life.

  Brrrrroooom! Brrrrroooom!

  The building shook.

  What was that?

  Agrawal must have caught Magnus’s look of surprise.

  “That’s the undercarriage cannons on the Storks,” Agrawal transmitted through the noise.

  That means the drones are at point blank range.

  Two of Magnus’s attendants came back up. He sent one to protect Agrawal. Then one of Agrawal’s arrived. Magnus assumed the others had been shot down by the drones or blown up by the grenade.

  His soldier robots below had been decimated. The tactical told him there was only one left. Telisa was with their last Stork. Magnus wanted to tell her to run, or to pop over the edge of the building and cover her, but he knew she could take care of herself better without any distractions. Besides, if Magnus showed himself now then any of those drones could cook him in an instant. His Veer suit would be unable to save him if one of their energy weapons hit him in the face.

  Agrawal had the answer. He scrambled over to the edge of the roof section and put his weapon over the edge of the building.

  Riiiiiip! Riiiiiip!

  Magnus saw Agrawal had taken out four machines with his last clip. Magnus’s own rifle could do the same, but it was not designed to shoot around corners as Agrawal’s PAW had been.

  I really do need to get a new rifle.

  “Thanks,” Telisa transmitted. “I’m just cleaning up now,” she said casually. “I’m afraid the robots have had it.”

  There was actually a hint of amusement in her voice as she made the last comment. She shared a video feed from below: the hardtop was littered with thousands of pieces of metal, carbon, and ceramic for hundreds of meters ahead of her.

  “The mines have proven effective,” Marcant said. “We’ve stopped the tanks.”

  “The squadron just finished off the last tank we can see,” Caden reported. Magnus could not tell if the two were competing with each other, or if their reports had just happened to come in close together.

  Magnus scanned the tactical, looking for any remaining enemy. The area looked clear. He noticed that Cilreth was not on the shared map.

  “Clean up any remaining drones. I’m going to go find Cilreth,” Telisa said.

  Magnus did not take the order as targeted at himself. It was one of the privileges of being the boss’s lover. He grabbed the smart rope and slid down to the ground to find her, leaving Agrawal behind.

  At the bottom, he surveyed the destruction for himself. Not only had the robots been utterly obliterated, but the sides of the building had been scarred. The Destroyer drones had not used any explosives as far as Magnus knew, but when the energy beams struck a robot and damaged the energy rings or any ordnance, an explosion often resulted.

  Magnus ran for the perimeter fence where it had been melted through. Two Celaran robots were already reconstructing it.

  “So where do we start?” Magnus sent Telisa. “I see where the biggest piece fell.”

  She did not answer, but he saw her location on the tactical just ahead in the jungle. He double-timed it over to her position. He was surprised when reached her—he had assumed he would not be able to catch her.

  “Any clues or are we just going to use a search pattern?” he asked.

  “Come with me,” Telisa ordered. Her voice was hard.

  They ran up a huge vine for a hundred meters where it peaked at a large greenish support spike. Telisa walked around the far side of the top of the spike. There, she turned to face Magnus.

  Magnus saw tear streaks running down her face.

  “Cilreth didn’t put down?” Magnus asked, suspecting he already knew the answer. Telisa shook her head, unable to speak.

  “She didn’t make it?”

  Telisa cleared her throat.

  “There was never a reason to suppose that she did. I called it a bailout because I needed everyone to focus on the fight,” Telisa admitted. “The Celarans have already found her. She’s gone.”

  Magnus nodded. She had been right to shift everyone’s attention during the battle.

  “We aren’t supposed to be soldiers!” she fumed. “We’re out here to learn from alien technology. We come in, we search, collect, and run away to study artifacts. This is killing us one by one, the list of dead never stops growing. Jason. That kid worshipped us. I left him to die. Now Cilreth, too.”

  Telisa turned away to hide her face. She leaned against the spike.

  “I understand. But I also know, Telisa Relachik doesn’t leave innocent aliens to die. We have to help the Celarans for so many reasons.”

  Telisa shook her head. “I’m not a soldier. You aren’t anymore, either. We’re explorers. There’s only more death waiting if we keep this up.”

  “If you want to leave, I see the sense of it. But with the Iridar destroyed, what options do we still have?”

  “When the cavalry arrives, we withdraw the PIT team. Shiny and the Space Force can protect the Celarans. We’ll leave and go back to what we’re supposed to be doing. In the future, our training will focus on evacuating, not fighting. If we find trouble again, we’ll leave the robots behind to fight while we withdraw.”

  Magnus nodded. “I’m with you.” He did not point out that people could still die running to the ship, or the ship could still be shot down. The basic sentiment was sound: let the robots die in the place of PIT members.

  “She still exists in the memory of a Trilisk column somewhere,” Magnus pointed out. He was not as certain as he sounded, but it seemed likely that Shiny could produce a copy of Cilreth if it suited his purposes.

  “Maybe. But that’s not our Cilreth. Not the one we’ve been talking to and working with these last weeks.”

  He nodded.

  “Shiny had better show,” she said. “If he doesn’t, and he keeps the Space Force from deploying here, we go rogue. I’ll never bring back a scrap for him, I swear. We’ll find our own Trilisk AI and fight him from the frontier.”

  Chapter 17

  Sarfal glided about the hollow center of the colony building as Rootpounders dropped down from a ceiling portal to me
et with each other. The Rootpounders seemed to go to one place and then sit still, making Sarfal feel like the only mobile entity in the open space. Sarfal flitted from rod to rod, trying to find the best spot to watch. Finally Sarfal stopped and settled, even though the spot was only mediocre.

  All of them were present except the leader and Shypilot, who had died in the Destroyer attack. Sarfal wondered what they would do now that they had no spaceship to live and travel in. Sarfal wondered if they missed the Rootpounder who had died. She supposed they might, but it was difficult to read the moods of the aliens, since not even one little part of their bodies ever glowed.

  Strongjumper finally appeared. It dropped from above, without a rope, and then stomped over. Sarfal watched carefully. Something was different. The other Rootpounders watched her. Their grotesque sensory clusters pointed at her intently.

  “[Slash the vines like one insane] I’ve had enough of being a target for the Destroyers. It’s time to launch an offensive,” Strongjumper said. The mood conveyed by the translator was not quite right, but Sarfal felt it was because the aliens could feel things that Thrasar did not. It was scary. These creatures were capable of the same horrible acts the Destroyers were. The difference was, these ones did target the Thrasar for their insane acts.

  “[A threat unseen is felt] As you know, the main problem is the ocean,” Grimfighter said.

  “[This is certainly the right vine] We can overcome it. We have control of local space, at least for the time being.”

  “[Hidden below the leaves] They’ve somehow managed to obscure themselves in the ocean. And if we knew where to strike, water will absorb too much energy from most of our shipborne weapons to hit factories seven or eight kilometers deep,” Tallflyer said.

  “[Search the jungle on a new day] We’ll find them. Then we can drop asteroids into the ocean and destroy them,” Strongjumper said.

  Sarfal flew into a corner of the big room and circled there. “[Watch over the fat vines] If you release too much steam into the atmosphere you’ll harm our new home.”

  “[The other side of the leaf] And if we use ones that are too small, they won’t destroy much,” Shortflyer said.

  “[Glide slowly on a sunny day] We might be able to do something with objects less than 100 meters in diameter,” Grimfighter said thoughtfully.

  “[A predator can hide there] I’ve heard that meteorite impacts, even involving objects of that size—”

  “[Vigilance in a strange grove] Well, yes, but in our case, we can manage the impact velocity,” Grimfighter said. “We don’t have to use velocities like those that might occur if comets or asteroids intersect the planet’s path. We can achieve much lighter strikes, say maybe 5 kilometers per second.”

  “[Be lazy on a sunny day] What’s the point of vaporizing a rock on the surface of that ocean? We’ll produce a lot of steam, but would it really hurt the Destroyer base?” Tallflyer asked.

  “[Vine squeezed of sap] Would the shock wave crush them?” Shortflyer added.

  “[One creature on the leaf is not like another] A big enough impact on the surface might cause a shock wave that could crush a Rootpounder facility,” Palethinker said. “But these are water dwellers. Assuming their ships and factories are full of liquid, they become much less compressible. Also, they probably have defenses from this sort of thing, if we believe it likely they’ve had wars amongst themselves in their native oceans.”

  “[Remove a sweet vine carefully] Bombs, then. We can build bombs and drop them into the ocean, set to go off at depth,” suggested Shortflyer.

  “[Others will feed there first] Better, but the Destroyers are going to be more advanced at this kind of warfare then we are,” Grimfighter said. “They won’t sit by and let the bombs reach them. A sinking bomb has to be an easy target to an advanced race that built underwater civilizations.”

  “[Distract them while you drink] Start dropping some smaller rocks on them to keep them busy,” Strongjumper said. “Anything we can to disrupt their production. Give me time to come up with a better plan.”

  “[What vines lie there] At random?”

  Strongjumper looked at Palethinker.

  “[You find another vine] You’ll help us target them.”

  “[Fear of the known] I was afraid you’d say that.”

  Strongjumper was silent for a moment. It moved its bulbous upper appendage as if it had become unbalanced. The group of aliens stopped talking and thought.

  “[Desperate need for new sap] What about our ships? They can go into the water,” Strongjumper suggested.

  “[Danger under the leaf!] You’d be losing any ship that does that, I almost guarantee it,” said Shortflyer.

  Strongjumper struck a container, causing it to crack. Sarfal darted straight across the room and had to stop in the other corner.

  There’s no place to hide! These supply holders are like leaves... dare I go under one? There should be no predators here except the Rootpounders, it would be safe...

  “[Don’t hide under the leaves] You’re scaring Sarfal,” Shortflyer said.

  “[When the vines are dry] Sarfal, can the Thrasar ships be modified to work underwater? Do they already? Can your new tools-for-harm be modified to work in water?” asked Strongjumper.

  What will it do if I say no?

  “[You can check under a leaf if you don’t fear what you’ll find] They might, given enough effort. But what if the Destroyers come back from space? If we can’t use the water tools on them in space, they will kill us all.”

  “If we don’t do something, then you’ll have to leave this planet, too. The enemy is making ever stronger waves of Destroyers,” Grimfighter reminded Sarfal.

  Sarfal did not want to run again, but it looked like the best option by far.

  “[Caution in a new jungle] Could you design such a water tool-for-harm? We can make a small number of prototypes here in our factory.” said Strongjumper. “Then we could see how effective they might be.”

  “[This vine is good] I’ll do it.”

  “[Drink from more than one vine] In the meantime we need to push our language progress. Once our campaign starts, I intend to press for peace.”

  Peace! So even the Rootpounders want to stop hurting the Destroyers and being hurt by them.

  Strongjumper paused. “[I see the danger under the leaves] I know what you’re thinking. It won’t work. If it doesn’t, we’ll finish this. We have to protect the Thrasar. It’s clear who the aggressor is here. If we need to kill those controlling the Destroyers then we will.”

  None of the Rootpounders dissented. Sarfal swooned at the idea of killing off any kind of intelligent creature.

  Yet what choice is there? When we run, they destroy what we leave behind. They want to end us.

  “[Take flight!] We’d better get to it, then,” Strongjumper announced. The Rootpounders all rose on their thick hind legs. They stomped over to their artificial climbing vines ponderously. Strongjumper paused and waved an upper appendage, which Sarfal understood was a polite parting gesture. Then it jumped to the ceiling without using a rope.

  Then the other Rootpounders climbed back out of the building. Silence came to the chamber. Sarfal glided around the space three times, then loosely caught a rod with three fingers. Sarfal’s serpentine body twirled over the rod, then settled under it in the gravity of the planet. The rod felt nothing like a vine, it was too stiff. Perhaps it had been designed for a wide range of gravitation.

  The distraction is minimal.

  Sarfal started a describer to accept and formalize the constraint parameters for the new design. The Thrasar provided a general description of the work zone: the deep oceans of their new planet. Sarfal did not have to know the details; the describer would handle all of that.

  Then, most importantly of all, Sarfal specified the functions. It felt strange to tell the describer that Sarfal wanted a tool-for-harm; This tool was to take things apart that others wanted kept together!

  There, Sarfal hit a
snag. The describer kept adding safety features to ensure that no one would be harmed in the operation of the new tool. Sarfal patiently removed these one after the other with a growing mix of frustration and self-loathing.

  What am I doing? This is so awful. The describer might report me as insane.

  Sarfal flew around the room two times, allowing chemicals related to anxiety to subside. Then Sarfal had a new idea.

  Sarfal got a different type of software primitives out and started to write a new describer specifically for these destructive tools that had only safety features for the user and nearby Thrasar and Rootpounders. Sarfal excluded robots and any other living thing from the safety checks. That took an extra hour of work. It had been a long time since such a low-level task had come along.

  Then Sarfal launched the experimenters and gave them plenty of resources. The computing agents started to take random positions among the solution space and constructing new designs. Other agents started to craft solutions from what they had learned about building tools in the past. The two types of agents deposited their designs into a potential solution pool. There, the designs competed against each other in a simulation created by a measurer, and a learner would apply alterations to fine tune the competitors after every measuring.

  I’ll have something soon, Sarfal thought. Something horrible.

  Chapter 18

  Telisa shook her head to herself.

  I’m a xenoarchaeologist, or an explorer, or maybe just a looter, whatever. Now I have to negotiate with an alien race for all Terrans. And Celarans, for that matter.

  Before her, in the PIT camp, torn vines lay all about. They were not damaged by the Destroyers; the Iridar had caused the mess the last time it had lifted off.

  And I have to figure it out without her.

  Telisa forced the emotions down because she knew she had to. This was about the survival of the Celarans; it was bigger than any of them. The rest of the team had taken the news of Cilreth’s demise well, at least on the outside.

  As hard as the problems were that the other team members faced, she envied them. Tackling technical problems had a completely different flavor than making big decisions that would impact the future of three races. Decisions that an explorer should not have to make.