The Celaran Refuge (Parker Interstellar Travels Book 8)
Page 23
“Lee will take us to the Celaran homeworld,” Telisa said.
“Take us as in...” Caden asked.
“Guide us. Well we have our choice of Terran starships here. We’ll probably take a modest assault carrier, something designed for moving in and out of atmospheres quickly and stealthily with a good cargo capacity. I’ll ask Lee to put in some Celaran stealth modifications as they did with the Midway.”
“It doesn’t sound smart to me,” Caden said.
Siobhan looked at her boyfriend in astonishment.
“I mean we won’t have supplies,” Caden protested. “Weapons, robots, attendant spheres...”
Telisa nodded. “Shiny sent us a shipment of attendants with the fleet,” Telisa announced. “I agree that we’re running thin on a few other things and we’ll miss the robots. But I have gifts for you all.”
Telisa handed out small black containers to everyone.
“What are these?” asked Caden.
“Breaker claws. The Celarans came through for us,” Telisa said.
“So slickblack!” exclaimed Caden, taking his out of the smooth case. It looked like a silver claw or talon, the size of a Terran’s thumb.
“Careful, the breakers can cause explosions. Practice using them in our VR training first,” Telisa warned.
I shouldn’t treat them like green recruits. They all know that. Still, we’ve lost people to weird accidents...
“And these?” asked Siobhan, holding up a small metal sphere.
“When Lee produced these breaker claws, of course I was overjoyed,” Telisa said. “And yet I had the audacity to ask for her to reproduce something else for us. My cloaking device.”
“They already succeeded in fabricating another—” Siobhan disappeared. She reappeared after a moment. “Oops. Sorry. They reproduced another alien artifact!”
“Not exactly...” Telisa said.
“But it came from Shiny’s vault on Vovok, right?” Caden asked.
“Yes. But when I showed it to Lee, she explained that it’s Celaran technology.”
“What?!” Caden gasped.
“Watch,” Telisa said. She took out a Celaran lift baton and touched it to the sphere. They joined with a soft click. Joined together, the pieces looked vaguely like Siobhan’s stun baton.
“Interesting,” Magnus said, staring at his new devices. “I suppose it does seem like something Celarans would make if you think about it—they’re good at evading attention.”
No one said anything for a second, then Caden bit.
“So how did Shiny get one?” he asked.
THE END
From the Author
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