The Celaran Refuge (Parker Interstellar Travels Book 8)

by Michael McCloskey

  Telisa wished she could talk to Cilreth. At least Magnus was back. She thought of Marcant.

  He might be better than confiding in Caden or Siobhan... I guess I’ll think it over.

  Fortunately, a few supplies had been unloaded by Magnus’s PIT robots for the team and cached in the jungle nearby. Telisa hauled some light containers of food and medical equipment into the clearing. Unfortunately, most of their arsenal had been destroyed with the Iridar. They would be leaving their energy packs out in the sunlight to recharge over days.

  Maybe the Space Force unit left behind some recharging equipment. Or we could ask the Celarans for yet another favor...

  As she worked, she stopped periodically to watch the Celarans as they prepared for a planetary bombardment of their new home. She could not see much with her own eyes or attendants from here outside the industrial complex, but she had access to Celaran feeds from all over the system.

  This can’t be easy for them. They just got to this beautiful planet, and now they’re endangering it.

  The Celarans had deployed a small regiment of ships and machines to find raw materials from asteroid belts in the system. Some of the rocks were being diverted into orbit to be used for the attacks. Telisa watched the first asteroid queue up with another task force above the ocean where the Destroyers’ base operated.

  A ship dropped with the rock. It bled off a lot of energy entering the atmosphere and holding the fragment with its gravity spinner. The rock came in nice and slow.

  That could be dangerous, Telisa realized. If the Destroyers send missiles up after it...

  As if afraid of the very dangers Telisa contemplated, the ship dropped the rock and headed back up into the rarefied atmosphere above. She watched the chunk of space rock plummet toward the waters.

  A red icon flashed on the tactical. From the water’s surface, a missile arced upward toward the threat. Seconds later it hit the rock, breaking it into three pieces.

  Wow. That’s impressive! That missile must have been highly optimized for that job, Telisa thought. Then she realized perhaps the asteroid did not have an iron core. That might be why it was selected for the bombardment instead of the Celaran starship industry.

  The chunks fell to the water without further incident. Telisa watched the impact from sensors on Celaran starships. Huge columns of water and steam rose from the impacts.

  Such power in something so simple. And it had a very low closing velocity.

  Apparently the Destroyers were ready to defend themselves from this method of attack.

  That’s good though... one less missile they have. All we did is drop a rock.

  Then Telisa wondered: had they really traded well against the enemy? The Celarans had to divert the rocks from the outer system to here, then accompany it into the atmosphere. The Destroyers had mined enough materials to make the missile, probably had to process a lot of various chemicals to make the explosives, and fire it off. Which side had used up more time, energy and materials?

  Three more asteroids arrived at the queue point for the task force to direct for the ongoing attack. Telisa watched various feeds from the nearby Celaran ships. Apparently the aliens were going to try the next three objects simultaneously. The plan was to increase the rate of the bombardment as well as the energy of the projectiles until the Destroyers surrendered or they started to damage the planet. If no surrender came then Telisa foresaw a crisis: would the Celarans continue, or just flee the planet?

  “How’s the attack developing?” asked Magnus over his link. Telisa saw from the shared map that he was with Agrawal in the complex. They were probably overseeing the deployment of newly made robots and weapons.

  “The Celarans started the bombardment,” she said. “Unfortunately, we have to experiment with these asteroids to determine the environmental impact as best we can, which means as we scale up our assault, the enemy may have a chance to adapt to it.”

  “Agrawal and I are replacing the hardware we lost and redeploying it. Well, except for the force towers, which would be the Celaran’s responsibility, but I guess they’ve decided the towers are not an efficient way to defend from the attacks. You should know that some predators might start to slowly make their way closer to the complex, starting from the west.”

  Wonderful.

  Lee interrupted the conversation by requesting a channel with Telisa. She accepted it and added Magnus to the channel.

  “I have two bits of news,” Lee said. “I’ve completed a tool design we can put onto our starships that would work well in the ocean. It should take apart many of their tools and buildings.”

  “That’s great. I hope you can start making some of them,” Telisa said. “What else?”

  “We found an inert Destroyer machine among the vines.” An image came along the channel, showing the machine as it had been discovered in the jungle.

  “Inert?”

  “It’s been damaged by a tungsten fragment from one of the mines,” Lee told her. “Still, most of its systems are untouched.”

  “Just one fragment? Why didn’t it explode like the others?”

  “The mine may have detonated prematurely for unknown reasons. Also, the power rings in the Destroyer must have been depleted by combat operations at the moment the mine detonated,” Lee explained. “Without any current in the broken ring, there wasn’t any energy stored in the electromagnetic field, so there was no heating up from arcing—no explosion. The Destroyer simply suffered massive power failure.”

  “Don’t they have some other ion storage backups?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Have you scanned the insides? Could we run some tests on it?” Telisa asked.

  “Scientists are examining it. I don’t know anything else.”

  “Thanks for letting me know. I’ll tell Marcant. He may want to try and talk to it.”

  “Talk to it?” Lee asked.

  “I mean, we may try telling it what to do in its language and see if it obeys. It probably won’t, but it would be an interesting experiment.”

  Lee sent a nonverbal acknowledgement on the channel and then put it into an idle state to let Telisa know that Lee had nothing else to say. Telisa let the channel drop.

  They’re getting better at talking with us all the time.

  “Well, you heard that. I guess I’ll let Marcant know.”

  “Could be a big discovery. I’ll let you get to it!” Magnus said and dropped the connection.

  Sounds more like it’s you that wants to get back to playing with the robots, Telisa thought. She was amused rather than annoyed.

  If Magnus wasn’t back... without him or Cilreth... I might give up.

  “Marcant. Lee’s just told us that they captured a tank which is largely intact. It had fallen among a tight group of large vines in the last battle.”

  “I need to know everything,” Marcant stated calmly. “In particular—”

  “In particular we should use it to test our ideas about the intermediate machine language,” Achaius finished for him.

  “Exactly. Can we send it commands?” Marcant said.

  Telisa smiled. Marcant had already taken the news and run with it. Telisa had nothing more to offer at the moment.

  “Coordinate with the Celarans directly. I’d try a subsystem first,” Telisa suggested. “I don’t even know yet if they want the thing. I was thinking about taking one of its beam weapons for study, but I don’t necessarily want you to try and talk to anything dangerous.”

  “It wouldn’t have any energy to use, anyway,” Marcant said. “I have to tell you: This may be slow going.”

  Telisa could understand that. So far, she had been lucky enough to encounter aliens that wanted to communicate and cooperate. Without that two-sided approach, alien technology remained mysterious much, much longer... indefinitely, in the case of the Trilisks.

  “I’m sure you and your friends can puzzle it out. Then I’ll put you on the Trilisks.”

  Marcant laughed. Telisa rea
lized she had not heard him laugh much before. She dropped the connection. Soon, her mind started to run through the same circles she had been stuck in before she had allowed the bombardment to fully distract her. Sooner or later, they would be able to talk to the Destroyers or their Masters. What would they say?

  Maybe we could end this war with mere words. What words? Should we even refrain from trying until we understand those who created the Destroyers?

  Telisa finished moving the last container. The camp became lonely and silent. Caden and Siobhan were at their new factory. Telisa told three tents to deploy in case anyone returned. They would not be sleeping on the Iridar any longer.

  Some part of Telisa made a sudden decision on who to talk to next. She opened a channel.

  “Adair?”

  “Hello Telisa,” Adair replied quickly.

  “Do you have any cycles to help me out?”

  “You’re the boss, actually, so yes,” Adair said.

  Intelligent enough to suck up to the boss, that’s for sure.

  “Well what are you working on now?”

  “I’m monitoring the traffic we intercept in the ocean to understand and localize it so we can find the underwater factories, running simulations to find improvements in the timing of our mines’ combined-arms style detonations, calculating the minimum number of missiles we need to use to destroy colossals with statistically acceptable certainty, poring over a number of—”

  “Okay you’re busy,” Telisa summarized. “I’ll try to be quick. I want to devise a strategy for the negotiations,” Telisa said. “Given what we know about the Destroyers, we’ve already mentioned the theme I prefer: negotiation from a position of strength. The Destroyers came here to annihilate this race. We’re not going to succeed by just asking them to stop. We have to threaten them or force them.”

  “What more do you have to do than explain that we’ll kill them if they don’t leave the planet alone?” Adair said.

  “I think we can leverage our entire civilization. They don’t know anything about us, but we showed up and saved the Celarans in a space battle. We’ll let them know they don’t want to make enemies of us. They’ll be fighting two races instead of one. We can threaten to take the campaign back to them, something they probably know the Celarans can’t or won’t do.”

  “I agree that could be compelling, though you might be dragging all Terrans into a war without consulting with any leaders.”

  According to Shiny, we’re ranked higher than Admirals in the Space Force, Telisa thought, but she did not say it. She agreed with Adair’s sentiment.

  “You’re right, but I’m willing to do it if that saves the Celarans. Besides, maybe I can imply this, or somehow take advantage of how little they know about us.”

  “We don’t know if they’re in the dark,” Adair said. “First off, Destroyers killed the Seeker. Did they learn anything about us before that? Since then? Also... there may be Trilisks at the helm of their civilization. They may know everything there is to know about Terrans. It seems to me that we’re the ones in the dark.”

  Hrm. This one sees the cup half empty!

  “Not at all. We know some race created this massive war machine. And we know when the Celarans asked for mercy, the requests fell on deaf ears. We know the Celarans did nothing but run for their lives, at least initially.”

  “Seems like the Destroyers have the power here.”

  “It’s hard for me to understand why they would want to kill the Celarans at all. What common ground are we sure to have with the Destroyers?” Telisa asked.

  “Nothing is certain, but as races that evolved on planets like these, Terrans and Destroyers likely understand critical resource management. We evolved with limited resources and strained against those limits for a long time. If we make it clear to them that they will throw away a lot of resources against us to no gain...”

  “Then they would decide the campaign is not to their advantage. Not from a moral standpoint, but from an economic one. Do you have an idea how to highlight this to them?”

  “They poisoned the vines. We can poison the ocean. It’s a scorched earth strategy. They can fight and expend huge resources, but we can deny them any gain,” Adair said.

  “Poison how?”

  “I don’t have that answer yet.”

  “Ugh. Maybe we can threaten that but not carry it out. It’s a crime to waste such a beautiful planet.”

  “I suspect we would have to actually carry through with it at least once. If it helps you, consider that the Celarans already changed this place: they covered it with their vine jungles. None of this is natural. That could be what started this war in the first place. What if Celarans did this to planets the Destroyers wanted? Maybe even, planets they already inhabited, in the oceans?”

  Wow.

  “Still, what a horrible thing. I’d rather be tricky,” Telisa said. “The Celarans won’t be.”

  “The Celarans don’t like to fight, but they can be tricky, I think,” Adair said.

  “Why would you say that?”

  “The Celarans might be a tiny bit deceptive,” Adair said.

  “What? Tell me.”

  “Well, did you find it odd that they said their tools... their weaponry would not work underwater?”

  “Not at all. Why would their energy weapons be designed to do that?”

  “Because they’re Celaran. They try to make everything as versatile as they can.”

  “That seems extreme,” Telisa said.

  “They are extreme,” Adair said. “They have starships that can and have operated underwater, including energy weapons... though admittedly, calling them ‘weapons’ is not really accurate. As the Celarans say, they’re just energy projectors, usable in many different contexts.”

  “So when Lee agreed to work on it, she was being deceptive? It sounded to me like she was just afraid.”

  “I have a few theories. Lee may have been afraid of another attack from space as she said. Lee may not have known the answer. Or Lee may have been stalling so she could consult other Celarans about the idea of sending starships into that ocean after the Destroyer base.”

  “I’m feeling tired now. Thanks for your time,” Telisa said.

  “Then you should be very alarmed! Isn’t your host body extremely energetic? I thought you had superhuman levels of physical and mental endurance—”

  “I meant to say, I’m ready to avoid thinking directly about these critical decisions for a short time, and so I’d like to halt the conversation.”

  “Sure. I’m always here to help if you want to resume later,” Adair said.

  That was help? I feel more unsure than when I started the conversation.

  She had a lot more to think about now, but not many more real answers.

  Chapter 19

  Marcant studied the scans of the Destroyer tank. The Celarans had transported the enemy machine to the industrial complex and slipped it into a large bay in one of the crazy-shaped buildings. Once there, they had methodically scanned the outside, then probed the innards with more EM and particle sweeps. Finally, the flyers started to disassemble it.

  Marcant could recognize power rings, a gravity spinner, and the energy weapon assemblies. Beyond that, he had nothing. He decided to focus on the gravity spinner first. In what ways did it differ from their own? What kind of cybernetics controlled it?

  He put himself into a three dimensional space containing the scan data. A large, multicolored spinner core floated above him. Marcant added a reverse engineering program he had stolen from a major corporation. As it started its analysis, various labels started to pop up over components, representing its best guesses so far. Marcant peeled off layers and looked for more, adding his own notes as he went.

  “I hope there’s not a bomb hidden in there. This could be a trap,” Adair said.

  “Circumstances are dire. A few risks must be taken,” Achaius replied. “There aren’t many Celarans here at the industrial site, anyway.”
/>   “Right. The industrial site is nothing. Just the core of their ability to resist invasion,” Adair said acidly.

  Marcant ignored their bickering and kept at it. Five minutes into the job, he suddenly leaned forward in his chair. Something about that diagram—what was it? It was familiar... too familiar!

  “The Quarus,” he said aloud.

  “What?” Adair asked.

  “I need the Iridar’s information cache...” he said. Marcant’s mood instantly soured; without the Iridar or any TRB, he was isolated from the vast knowledge of the Terran network.

  “The Celarans took a copy when we arrived,” Adair offered.

  “Hook me up,” Marcant demanded. He breathed a sigh of relief.

  Adair sent him a pointer to the Celaran cache. He still missed the Vovokan computational resources, but at least now he could make progress investigating his suspicion. He ignored Adair’s next questions and everything else that attempted to distract him for ten more minutes until he was sure.

  This is big.

  “Telisa,” Marcant transmitted, trying to open a high priority connection to the PIT leader.

  “Yes?”

  “The Destroyers were created by the Quarus.”

  It took Telisa a second to respond to the bombshell. The Quarus were one of the alien races Terrans had found evidence of before the PIT team found Ambassador Shiny. Everything the Terrans knew of the Quarus came from a single starship. The Terrans had developed the gravity spinner as a direct result of studying the Quarus ship. The aliens’ name came from the mystery of the ship and its function: the name basically meant “why” in an ancient language.

  “You must be mistaken. The Quarus ship—”

  “Was an unmanned vessel,” Marcant finished for her. “It was an exploration probe, or a robot ship, or who knows what. But the point is, there was no reason to carry the extra mass of a water environment inside such a ship. No doubt the Quarus were simply being efficient.”

  Marcant had guessed at what Telisa must be thinking: the Quarus ship discovered by the Space Force had been devoid of any atmosphere, despite having some interior servicing tunnels. It had not leaked out, but had clearly never been present. Everything they thought they knew about these two races, the Destroyer creators and the Quarus, were suddenly and intricately linked.