The Celaran Refuge (Parker Interstellar Travels Book 8)

by Michael McCloskey

  Siobhan nodded. “If the Celarans can get me those spinners, I can handle the modifications.”

  “Tell them this is our best chance at stopping the enemy without having to throw the entire fleet into the ocean.”

  ***

  Siobhan dove into her new mission with everything she had.

  She had been thinking about a simple crawler that would move along the bottom of the ocean to the factory site. But now, she realized a torpedo with a spinner warhead would be much faster to arrive near the target. The spinners would probably have to get within a couple hundred meters to capture the base in the area of effect. She doubted the Celarans would be providing huge spinners like the one used by the Celaran probe ship.

  A torpedo then... but won’t that be conspicuous? Actually, what IS conspicuous to a Quarus?

  Siobhan opened a channel.

  “Marcant.”

  “Yes?”

  “Did those little spy devices of yours come up with any native life forms down in the alien drink?”

  “Why, yes, they did. A wide variety, in fact. It’s part of what’s so difficult about finding what we want.”

  “Can you send me some signatures for creatures in the lowest regions of that ocean? The faster it moves the better. You know, a squid-like thing would be better than a crab that crawls on the bottom.”

  “I can find some candidates for you...” Marcant said.

  He’s wondering if he can ask.

  “I’m making a weapon and it needs to look like a fish,” she summarized.

  “Good luck. Those aliens probably warred among themselves a thousand years ago and had that same idea. I imagine by now...”

  “It doesn’t have to fool them for very long,” she said. She thought of the asteroids they would be embedded into. “And it won’t be their only camouflage. Besides, we’re launching a massive diversion at the same time... you know, the starship attack we threatened them with?”

  Why am I justifying this to Marcant?

  Part of Siobhan felt annoyance and the other part knew Marcant was smart. If he had criticism it was probably on the mark.

  “I’ll send two or three ideal candidates,” Marcant said. “Good luck.”

  Siobhan’s ire subsided a notch.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  She halted to think again. Her annoyance with Marcant transformed into determination to succeed. Marcant’s signatures came in and Siobhan looked them over. Two of the sigs were of streamlined fishlike creatures, and one was a... jet-propelled monstrosity. The sigs were suitable, but they were all slow.

  The advantages of using spinners is their speed. I can’t use these.

  Siobhan pondered the possibility of having the spinners move slowly until detected, then speeding up. The problem with that was, if a beam weapon locked on, it would be too late.

  No, this is all wrong.

  The idea relied upon stealth and speed, but she did not find the two to be compatible. Perhaps the Celarans could make a cloaking system? She shook her head. Siobhan asked Marcant for all the signatures he had seen.

  An image of a large juggernaut of a creepy-crawly came up in her PV. Siobhan stared at it: a black crab-thing with glowing antennae and a massive armored shell. The back of the shell was covered in rocks for camouflage. The sig would never work; the thing was just too slow.

  Still...

  It had armor and stealth. In that moment, Siobhan knew what she wanted to do. She sent a change of plans to Telisa.

  Chapter 21

  Telisa bolted awake to a high priority alert. The fog of sleep fled her brain in a split second—one of the advantages of being ‘Trilisk Special Forces’.

  The Celarans had detected the arrival of a new space fleet.

  If the Destroyers coordinate their next ground assault with another space attack...

  “They’re Terran,” Lee announced on the PIT channel.

  “Yes, a Space Force fleet of over 100 ships! I see the Midway among them,” Marcant reported.

  Telisa felt a wave of relief so strong it almost made her weep. Her hand came to her face. The skin over her eye felt smooth again; once she had gotten Magnus back onto the team, she had allowed an automated cosmetic kit to heal the scar.

  “This is Admiral Sager. It’s good to see you all,” said a broadcast from the fleet. A video connection was there so Telisa accepted the feed. She allowed one of her attendants to provide a video stream from her side.

  “You made it!” Telisa responded for the PIT team.

  “We’re glad to find you still alive. Has the enemy found you here?”

  “The enemy is in the ocean, Admiral. We need some of your ships here to assist us. The rest of the fleet should be deployed to meet any incoming Destroyer fleets.”

  “Yes, ma’am. What’s the plan?”

  “A little distraction for the enemy. Who is, by the way, the Quarus. We’ve discovered that the same race that made the famous Quarus vessel has constructed the Destroyers.”

  “I learned that,” Sager responded evenly. “Amazing, isn’t it?”

  “What? How do you know?”

  “We received a tachyonic transmission from a Celaran source shortly before our departure,” Sager said.

  So Siobhan’s friend came through for us.

  “What I don’t know is, why?” asked Sager, probably unaware of his reference to the origin of the alien name.

  “The lead theory is still xenophobia caused by the Vovokan attack,” Telisa said. “It’s also possible that Celaran probe ships altered the ecosystems of whole worlds that had Quarus in their oceans. Do you have any unmanned ships?”

  “Yes, many. We have 74 robot corvettes, basically missile carriers with light point defense energy weapons.”

  “Good. We might have to give a few of those away before it’s all over. We need to puff our force up. Make it threatening.”

  “We’re here to help... but I don’t see the enemy.”

  Telisa sent a pointer to the Admiral. “This ocean. They have at least one ship there, probably augmented by self-replicating factories.”

  Sager nodded. Telisa prepared to tell him that she had another course of action to effect once the charade began. She could send him details offline soon.

  “Do these corvettes’ missiles work underwater?” she asked.

  “No, but we have liquid environment ordnance designs available,” Sager told her. “We can begin production immediately.”

  Thank the Five!

  “That’s good news. We’ll need a lot of them as soon as possible,” Telisa said. She felt real hope rise for the Celarans.

  Surely we’ll succeed with this force on our side!

  Telisa scanned the Space Force fleet composition. It was beefy, even by post-buildup standards: 20 battleships carrying heavy energy weapons, twice that number of missile and drone cruisers, together with the robot corvettes Sager had mentioned, a dozen scout ships that reminded her of the Seeker, and over 50 support vessels. Shiny’s huge ships were glaringly absent.

  Or could they be out there, cloaked?

  “Do you have any... big friends out there, Admiral?”

  “Ambassador Shiny encouraged us to respond to the situation,” Sager said cautiously. “The rest secures Sol. We’re glad to come to the aid of our new friends.”

  “That’s fortunate. We need you here.”

  “Speaking of ambassadors,” Sager continued, “We have an ambassador who would like to be briefed, if that’s possible.”

  “Then send him down with a ship. The PIT team needs a new one. Also, I trust you brought ground assault machines with you. We need everything you’ve got down here by the industrial complex,” Telisa ordered, sending the Admiral another location pointer. “Destroyer attacks will originate from the west, from the same ocean. Your ground commander should coordinate with Magnus and Colonel Agrawal.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Sager said. Telisa felt that she could get used to ordering admirals around, though it still
felt weird to do so.

  Oh, well, practice makes perfect...

  “The fleet has two roles here,” Telisa said. “First, we need to bolster the defenses of the Celaran space stations in case a new Destroyer fleet appears. Secondly, we need at least 30 robot corvettes for the ocean assault. The battleships will be useful for a ground support role, as we need their energy weapons to drop any missiles the Destroyers are launching from that ocean. You know more than I do about your ships, so I want you to deploy them as you see fit with those roles in mind.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  ***

  Ambassador Gusti was a short man with dark skin and curly hair. Telisa’s first impression was of an energetic and focused individual.

  “Thank you for meeting me face to face,” Telisa said. They spoke in a meeting room of the small Space Force ship that had delivered Gusti to them. The crew of the ship worked to transport the sad little PIT camp into their cargo bay.

  “I appreciate your time, which I understand is limited,” he said politely.

  Telisa paused and then started in.

  “Ambassador Gusti. I’m sorry that this isn’t a better time to get to know the Celarans. Right now, relations are great, but they’re so very busy.” Telisa inhaled to continue, but Gusti jumped right in.

  “I’m not the UNSF Ambassador to the Celarans,” Gusti said. “I’m the Ambassador to the Quarus.”

  Telisa stared at Gusti again as if seeing him for the first time.

  Five Entities. How did I not see this one coming?

  He caught her reaction and continued. “We heard just in time. I was able to join the force minutes before departure.”

  “Have you had time to learn about the Quarus?” Telisa asked.

  “I’m an expert on the Quarus,” Gusti said defensively. “I’ve been the UNSF Ambassador to the Quarus for a decade.”

  What?!

  “We’ve been in contact with them? It’s a government secret?” Telisa asked, aghast.

  “No. Until now, my position has only been for a contingency considered highly unlikely. We now know it has come to pass. I know everything we learned from the Quarus vessel discovery. Please allow me to examine what you’ve learned since you encountered the Quarus?”

  “Yes, of course,” Telisa said. She sent him pointers to the things she found immediately relevant and resolved to find more data for him as soon as they were done talking.

  “Has Shiny given you an agenda?” Telisa asked bluntly.

  The directness did not faze the ambassador. He answered quickly.

  “I’m to offer them peace,” he said. “Fortunately, the Space Force and Shiny are on the same page here.”

  If Shiny wants peace with the Destroyers, it’s only so he can wipe them out by surprise later.

  Telisa noticed that he had not said ‘Ambassador Shiny’, but she did not know what to make of it.

  “Who do you serve? Where does your loyalty lie?”

  “My loyalties are complex. I serve the Space Force, Earth, all of humanity, and Shiny.”

  Wow. Did he list those in order?

  “I’m going to catch you up fast,” Telisa said. “I’ve sent you pointers for the preliminary information, but to sum it up: We’ve been fighting for our lives and the lives of our Celaran friends. All Celaran attempts at diplomacy have failed. We know the Quarus won’t stop when they’re winning. The war machines built by the Quarus devastated and poisoned the Celaran homeworld. We can communicate with the Quarus, but it’s very difficult to do so.”

  Gusti nodded. He did not jump in this time, so Telisa continued.

  “I would like to make one more offer of peace, to see if they accept it when they’re outmatched. However, we’re working against the clock. The enemy’s production capability is ramping up faster than ours and they’re going to launch another attack if we don’t stop them. Therefore, I won’t hold back the counterattack when it’s ready. We have to try and send them a message before the attack. Even if they accept a truce, it’ll be a risk to believe them. However, the arrival of the Terran fleet affords us that possibility, at least, since we now have enough heavy energy weapons support to resist another ground attack.”

  “So it’s not even up to me,” the Ambassador said. His voice was neutral, but Telisa imagined he must find that very frustrating.

  “You propose we allow our new allies, the Celarans, to die so that we can continue to attempt to reason with the Quarus?” Telisa responded carefully.

  “We could continue to defend the Celarans, of course,” said the Ambassador. “The Space Fleet is here now.”

  “I meant the fleet buys us some time. It’s still the case that if the Quarus just stall on diplomatic negotiations, the advantage will eventually tip back into their favor.”

  “How is their production outstripping ours?”

  “The Celarans just uprooted their colony and fled here. The Quarus have some kind of automated factories down there, and we believe they are building more factories as well as building war machines. Also, the fact that the seed ship followed us here probably means the rest of the Quarus know our new location, so more Destroyer ships could arrive at any time.”

  “Please send me the evidence of these self-replicating factories,” Gusti said. “Do you have reason to believe the Quarus use this kind of technology?”

  “It’s only a theory based on inductive reasoning,” Telisa said. “The size of the second attack was exactly double that of the first. You’re familiar with the concept of self-replicating machines? It seems likely that their productive capacity is growing rapidly.”

  “After only two such attacks, it’s impossible to know for sure.”

  “That’s right, but we know how dangerous they are. There’s no reason to risk the Celarans... and ourselves, on the slight chance that we can befriend the Quarus where the Celarans failed.”

  “What if you learned the Quarus were here first? What if their surprising industrial capacity is because they already had a colony here? What if they followed you here to defend their colony? Would that change your outlook, TM?” Gusti asked.

  TM?

  “It would give me pause, though I still see one race aggressively exterminating the other. The Celarans welcomed us warmly, and I think they would have done the same to any other group.”

  “Yet you just said, you’re going to attempt to achieve a truce by showing yourself to be a strong adversary. Surely there are many alien mindsets that would respond well to that. The Quarus may have seen only weakness in the Celarans. It could work.”

  “We’ll find out soon.”

  ***

  Telisa entered Magnus’s quarters, walked up to his sleep web, and collapsed into it beside him. She felt the comforting, cool resistance of his Veer suit against her.

  “What’s wrong?” Magnus asked.

  “What isn’t wrong?”

  “What now, I mean?”

  “The Ambassador.”

  “Yes?” he prompted.

  “Before, I complained about these responsibilities. About having to call the shots. You recall?”

  “Yes. The ‘we’re just explorers’ lament,” Magnus said carefully.

  “Yes, that one. Well the only thing I hate worse than having to make these huge decisions that affects billions of Terrans and aliens—”

  “Is standing by and watching the Ambassador make the decisions for you,” Magnus finished for her.

  “Exactly. Am I so arrogant, so power drunk, that I think I can do a better job than this man whose entire job is to be the Ambassador to the Quarus?”

  “You, a super intelligent, long-time student of xenoarchaeology, a seasoned veteran of alien relations, leader of the PIT team, savior of a whole alien race? Better than some random bureaucrat? You bet you are,” Magnus said.

  “That kind of thinking is dangerous.”

  “Underrating yourself is dangerous. What does the Ambassador want to do?”

  “He wants to halt our attack
and keep trying to talk.”

  “Which would result in disaster. We know that.”

  “No. We think we know that. What if we’re wrong?”

  “The chance we’re wrong is smaller than the chance Gusti is wrong. Shiny put his trust in us.”

  “If we go with Shiny that kind of makes us traitors, right? The real Terran government, what’s left of it, is the admiralty of the Space Force. They sent Gusti to be the ambassador to the Quarus.”

  “Let him be the Ambassador. That’s fine. Let him talk to them, that’s fine too. But we’re conducting a war to save the Celarans. Those poor creatures depend upon us for survival!”

  Telisa nodded.

  “Thanks. I feel better now, knowing I’m not the only power-corrupted tyrant here.”

  “Anytime.”

  Chapter 22

  Caden ran on a huge vine through the jungle. On his right, the Celaran perimeter fence had just gone out of sight behind the massive alien leaves. As Caden got his exercise and practiced jumping between the massive branches, he checked his progress on the tactical. He was half of the way to Siobhan’s position in the new factory.

  The map showed the location of each member of the team. That was a good thing, but Caden knew everyone would see that he was coming out to the factory again. Of course he often sought Siobhan out, but he almost never interrupted her work cycles. The problem was, would the rest of the team understand that?

  I should accomplish something useful while I’m there.

  What might that be? He would have to keep his eyes open and learn more about how the place worked. Questions could be directed at Siobhan.

  The rest of the run was pleasant. The fronds and bugs all around him looked familiar now. The wonder of being on an alien world had worn off in dozens of hours on Celaran worlds and hundreds more in virtual simulations of them.

  Up ahead, the new factory materialized from the foliage. Caden ran for a gate in the fence that surrounded the building. The sensor there detected his approach and opened for him. It was a nice addition for Siobhan’s factory—no need to cut through the fence or vault over it.