Parker Interstellar Travels 6: The Celaran Ruins

by Michael McCloskey

  This isn’t the rip-roaring to go Fast and Frightening that I know.

  “What is it?” Telisa asked.

  “Uhm... I want to take it more by the book this time,” she said. “Minimal risk, okay?”

  “Yes. That’s okay. There’s no book, though. This isn’t the Space Force. Today, it’s just, anything happens, you get the hell out of there, got it?”

  “Thanks. I don’t mean to let you down. It’s just...”

  “You have something to lose now? That’s fine. I get it. We want a look today. That’s it. You take a look, you get out, work done.”

  Siobhan sent her the nonverbal link acknowledgement.

  “Me first,” Telisa said. “If there’s no immediate response, come in after me. See what you can find. Take a peek in those buildings. We don’t need to bring anything back, unless it’s very easy.”

  Siobhan ack’d her again.

  “Don’t stay for longer than an hour this first time out,” Telisa said. “I’ll meet you back here. Once we have some idea what’s going on, maybe we can try a longer stint next.”

  Siobhan nodded. “Understood.” For the first time, Telisa believed Siobhan would be prudent. For some reason, that actually worried her, because it was a reminder that Siobhan and Caden were like her and Magnus had been.

  Quit thinking like that. Magnus is alive. We’ll be together again.

  They each called in their two attendants and tucked them away in their small packs. Then they activated their stealth systems from the cover of the leaves. Telisa walked out. She saw Siobhan on her tactical, but Siobhan would not be able to see her. Telisa’s alien cloaking sphere would not announce itself to Siobhan’s link or her UNSF stealth suit. Siobhan turned off her directed tactical communications, so that she dropped off Telisa’s view completely. They had decided full stealth was important, even though it would take a lot to detect the space force’s DTC suite running on the suit.

  Telisa actuated a mission timer. Cilreth had finally had a chance to learn how to recharge the cloaking sphere, so she had tested it to exhaustion. Under normal conditions with minimal movement, it had lasted for 29 hours. Telisa assumed if she remained active and generated a lot of noise that had to be dampened, that probably reduced the lifespan of the device.

  The fence before them was more of a light net. No doubt it was strong. The hexagonal spaces looked like they would not quite allow a human head through.

  It looks like a bird net, Telisa thought. They were flyers, or what they needed to keep out was a flyer. Or did they just prefer to be able to see through the barrier? A human facility would have a wall if necessary, with optical sensors placed around the outside.

  The net rose 30 meters high between the towers. As they had seen from their observing attendants, the towers would deal with anything coming in from above that. Telisa had toyed with the idea of tunneling underneath the complex, but that would be a much more complex approach. If Shiny had still been on the team, they might well have done that. The Vovokan would be great at working underground since he had come from that environment on his homeworld.

  She walked toward the fence and waited. Since Telisa had a tanto, her breaker claw, and a smart pistol, the plan called for Siobhan to cut the fence with her new laser pistol. Telisa smiled. Siobhan had happily turned in her 5-shot stunner for the laser pistol after they fled Sol. Imanol had looked on approvingly, calling the stunner a “core worlder weapon”. He meant a weapon for civilized folk. It had been very painful to the flat alien body Telisa herself had inhabited, but otherwise the stunners were so carefully targeted to affect humans, and even then to a very limited degree, they were not likely to be effective against a random alien creature. Telisa doubted Shiny would be bothered by a stunner.

  Siobhan started cutting. A section of the fence fell to the ground in a light breeze. Telisa moved forward quickly at first, covering a lot of ground. She ran over twenty meters onto the flat surface. She thought of the sensors on Skyhold that had noticed her weight.

  Here’s hoping the attendants didn’t miss any surface sensors.

  Telisa turned toward the buildings and waited. She did not see any response to her incursion or the damage to the net. She started to walk over to her side of the complex beyond. The open area was large. The closest building was over a hundred meters away.

  Some movement caught her eye. It was one of the feeds from a scout machine spying from the forest where they had cut through. It saw a large machine approaching the net on low treads.

  As I suspected. That vine-cutter is a multi-role machine. So Celaran.

  Telisa felt encouraged that she had gained a feel for the alien race. Though so many things remained a mystery, she knew a thing or two about them.

  Telisa loped toward the nearest building. She did not see any obvious entrances at the ground level. She approached closer to look for cracks in the surface that might indicate a flush door. She kept walking around the big building. A glance or two back the way she had come told her that the machine had started to repair the net with an unfamiliar tool. The tool was built into one of the arms, and the other arm ended in six long fingers, three on each side in opposition.

  Six fingers. Like Celarans? Do Celarans even have fingers?

  Some xenobiologists believed sophisticated manipulators were required in intelligent creatures. Something that did not manipulate its environment did not often need to be very smart. Telisa understood the idea, but she did not think it was an absolute. Probable, yes, but not a requirement.

  The building had smooth walls around its perimeter, and the other buildings looked the same.

  No doors around the sides. Just like the first tower building. They are flyers, they have to be. Or had to be.

  Telisa turned her attention upwards. The buildings had complex roofs. She had spotted trap doors up there in the initial orbital scans. She referenced her link map of the place and found the nearest door visible from above.

  She took a smart rope out of her pack. It remained within her stealth envelope, though when she used it, at least part of the rope would become visible. She gave the rope instructions, then threw it up with a lightning move. The rope hurtled directly to the top of the wall before her, then a few seconds most of it dangled down. Telisa compressed herself, then launched upwards with a powerful contraction of her superhuman muscles.

  She caught the rope and pulled herself up within another two seconds. Once at the top, she retracted the rope and hid it again. She moved to another spot on the roof and waited.

  Something came to investigate. A black disc flew over to where the rope had been exposed. Telisa froze and watched it. She observed the turret on the top of the machine rotate. She saw an opening there, moving about and wondered what kind of weapon it was. Apparently it could be brought to bear on anything in the hemisphere above the top half of the machine by moving side to side as well as altering inclination.

  I wonder if it can fly upside down.

  Within ten seconds it gave up and flew away. The complex had noted an anomaly and sent a machine to investigate. Was it a smart AI ready to catch her next clue? Or just a dumb automaton that relied more upon firepower than brains? A Terran complex might have a central AI to control a squadron of guard machines. Telisa caught herself imagining this complex was controlled the same way.

  Telisa decided the security machine might serve several functions like everything else the Celarans had made. She hoped that made it a mediocre combat machine at best.

  She walked over to the nearest trap door and regarded it. Certainly whatever investigated the rope would take note of the door being used? Would it then set a trap for her? Telisa took the risk and slipped inside.

  The building’s interior was almost completely open. At first Telisa thought it was a cluttered hangar. Then she saw that work areas had been methodically placed throughout and separated by short walls of about waist height. The entire floor space was sectioned off into separate areas about as large as the New I
ridar. She stood on a platform with no path down.

  It’s like one giant atrium! Makes sense. Flyers just use wide open space where Terrans would have hallways and stairs.

  Telisa scanned the open platforms. Each platform had different types of machines. She saw one platform with an assembly that seemed to be making short towers only about 3 meters tall. Another cell had dozens of dodecahedral shapes stacked along its perimeter.

  A factory maybe? Each area either stores, or creates, some different item. Time to steal something.

  Telisa walked to the edge of the work area she had landed in. A series of silver and gold batons were affixed to the short wall around the edge of the space. She walked over and carefully released one from the wall. Her cloaking device decided it was part of her equipment and made it disappear. To Telisa, the stealthed item became ghostly, just as she saw her own arms and legs.

  She had no idea what it was, but it was small, and light, so she slipped it into her pack.

  Okay. I promised Siobhan just a look. Time to move on.

  She took her prize back to the door. There, she looked took a second to look in all directions. She saw no signs of anything she could recognize as a threat. She saw something black hanging on a rod by the door. The rod was just like they had seen in the houses. Telisa looked closer. Some soft piece of black material hung there. It had silvery buttons or devices woven into it. Telisa saw black strings along an edge like laces or loose ties. She carefully lifted it from the rod and put it into her pack.

  Telisa wondered what Celaran visual sensors looked like. Was something watching the door? Or did the door just report activity about opening and closing? Did it see everything that passed through? She pushed her way back out the door, ready for anything.

  Back outside, she saw no sign of the flying discs she half expected. She moved away back to the edge and started to wonder if she could just jump back down. Then she saw three glider machines criss-crossing the grounds below.

  Something’s up. The machines know we’re here. Time to get out.

  Telisa hesitated. She decided even her amazing host body might break a leg dropping down from this height.

  I could sacrifice the rope. Leave it behind as a distraction. The drawback being, I’d be leaving behind a clue as to who had come snooping around.

  Telisa told the rope to drop her about five meters and then let go of the top. She took out her attendants as the rope hooked over the top of the building and wrapped around her waist. She hopped over the edge and told her attendants to dampen her fall.

  The rope held her part of the way down, then it let go of the top and pulled itself back to her. She accelerated toward the flat lot below, though more slowly in the low gravity. Her attendants pushed hard against each of her hands, slowing her more. At the bottom, she landed and absorbed the impact well.

  Telisa was congratulating herself on the agile landing when she looked up and saw one of the disks headed right for her. She simultaneously released the attendants and told them to defend her from close range. The disk rapidly closed. There was only one more second.

  Telisa ducked.

  The machine flew right over her and continued on, gaining speed. Telisa fumbled and brought out her breaker claw. She decided not to attack since the machine apparently did not see her.

  It’s headed toward Siobhan’s area fast. Must be trouble.

  Telisa saw another glider machine in the distance on a parallel course. Then another.

  She needs my help.

  Telisa moved quickly after the machine that had almost struck her, but as she considered the problem, she realized a distraction might be more valuable.

  Maybe if I attacked one of the towers... damn, we should have arranged for a signal to make the others create an external distraction for us.

  Telisa decided to follow the machines and see what had happened. She ran as fast as she could to keep up as they flew past one building and around another. Telisa considered dropping her cloak for just long enough to ask Imanol for a distraction. The alien machines were all around her. At least five of them would see her if she dropped her cover.

  It would only take them a split second to react to me. I wouldn’t make it if they wanted to shoot.

  Something lay huddled on the ground just ahead. There was a dark spot. A pool of blood? Telisa’s heart skipped a beat.

  Telisa hurried forward. She saw the broken remains of one of the glider machines. There was a scorch mark on the artificial surfacing a meter from its slagged pieces.

  Maybe it wasn’t Siobhan, she told herself. Maybe some wild animal got in. The electrical creature. No, that can’t be it. They have her.

  Telisa ran from the spot in a wide circle, looking for more signs of struggle. Her imagination flashed images of pieces of Siobhan laying scattered on the ground, but reality produced no such horrors for her to find.

  Nothing. She could have gotten away.

  Telisa headed back to the rendezvous point. She was still worried. When Telisa arrived at the fence where they had entered, she saw the repair machine had finished its job and moved on. It did not surprise her. It had still been less than an hour.

  Telisa waited. She brooded over whether she should be back searching or waiting, but most of the time had elapsed anyway. It would be worth waiting if Siobhan showed back up. When time ran out, Telisa cut through the fence with her super-sharp tanto and ran behind some of the largest vines at the edge. There, she uncloaked and checked her link.

  Siobhan was not nearby. Telisa contacted Cilreth.

  “Siobhan isn’t back yet. Have you heard or seen anything?”

  “No! Should we come help?” Cilreth asked.

  “No, not until we make a different plan. I don’t want to get anyone else shot or captured. I saw a destroyed guard machine, I think she must have had to kill it. I’m going back in to look for her. If she contacts you, tell her to stay outside the perimeter. I’ll find her.”

  “And if you don’t come back?”

  “Then you’re in charge.”

  “Cthulhu sleeps! You’d better come back.”

  Telisa cloaked herself and ran back inside. The repair machine had not yet been summoned.

  First, that distraction.

  Telisa took out a grenade and approached the nearest tower from inside the compound. Telisa told the grenade to go magnetic and detonate in ten seconds. The device clamped onto the surface of the tower. Telisa silently thanked the Five Entities that the tower had some ferrous material in its composition.

  Telisa ran off deeper into the compound at her top augmented speed. She spotted the repair machine headed out. For good measure she rolled out a grenade targeted for it just as the first grenade exploded behind her.

  Kaboom!

  A second later, the next explosion destroyed the repair machine, sending its frame flipping through the air. It hurled away in a spectacular pyrotechnic display.

  Kablam!

  Wow. It wasn’t as heavy as I would have expected.

  Telisa selected one of the largest buildings in the area and ran for it as glider machines started to show up all over the complex. She thought of her smart rope as she ran, but she caught sight of a lower series of extensions to the building on one side. She ran toward the lower part of the building. As she neared it, she launched herself into the air with a powerful leap.

  Seconds went by as she hurtled through the air. She asked for a small boost from her attendants and got it, delivering her onto one of the lowest roof surfaces. She landed off balance so she rolled with it. Her training and new agility paid off, allowing her to regain control of herself gracefully.

  The exhilaration of the jump made her think of Siobhan.

  She would have loved that. Please let her be in here.

  Telisa glanced back at the smoke and debris she had left behind on the field. One large machine had emerged to clean up the mess, while the armored glider machines crisscrossed the field, searching for the enemy.

 
; The roof was a gray-turquoise color. It slanted crazily in two or three different panes that adjoined the lower level she was on. Telisa climbed up like a spider, accenting her route with jumps as needed. At the top, she saw two doors and a collection of six windows in a long line.

  If I break in, that would be more alarming to them, right? They will sense the door mechanism... but what choice do I have?

  Telisa walked forward and hopped down onto the closest door. The portal opened under her weight and let her slip inside.

  The interior of the huge building extended wide and open in all directions. Telisa landed on a small white platform that shook under her weight.

  This is a launching platform. From here, I would glide where I need to go. It’s for flyers, or for creatures that have some kind of flying assist.

  Telisa thought over alternatives. Was her conclusion correct? She looked around at the huge space. To get here from below, she would have to be able to jump very well, glide, or fly.

  They could have been merely gliders. Gliders turned flyers by technology. With boosters like my attendants, a light glider could get anywhere in here in a matter of seconds.

  Did I make a flawed assumption? Maybe this building is purely robotic. Maybe real Celarans are not even supposed to go inside here. Then why does the door let me in? Why all the open space? Wouldn’t machines make do with a denser work area?

  And where the hell are they?

  The building was filled with machines and equipment Telisa could not begin to understand. To her left was a series of enclosed cylinder tanks that looked like liquid or gas storage. To her right she saw five huge fabricators or power plants or... what? Pipes ran everywhere like a refinery or chemical plant. The space in the center of the building was oddly empty.

  Clearly industrial... not a place to keep prisoners. I should search somewhere else...

  A thin break line along the main floor caught her attention. The line cut right through the middle of the open area. Telisa caught sight of more seams in the floor to either side abutting the areas holding the machinery.