Parker Interstellar Travels 6: The Celaran Ruins

by Michael McCloskey

  “Hang with me, guys,” Telisa said. “I would give you more time to recover from your injuries, but I don’t want us all to have time to recuperate.”

  Telisa did not know how long it would take for the Vovokan battle sphere to restore its energy reserves, but she hoped it would not be ready to face the Celaran machines. The sphere seemed stronger than anything she had seen from the Celarans yet, though it was hard to gauge the relative power of such disparate forces.

  Cilreth brought the New Iridar in just over the massive alien spires and huge leaves. That suited Telisa just fine, since she was not completely sure the towers could not hurt their craft. They approached the compound without incident. The ship slowed, then settled back down amid the spires, crushing vines and debris underneath it as it settled. The towers were quiet.

  As expected, the system is smart enough to know the difference between a few wild flyers and a spacecraft.

  Everyone headed for the exit ramp. The team dispersed along the fence. Telisa winced, seeing people limping out with holes in their suits. The Vovokan sphere floated out and headed straight for the Celaran installation.

  By the Five, it’s about to go crazy out here.

  “Cover,” she reminded everyone. Telisa took up a spot near the ship. The team all knew enough to stay out of the open, but when Telisa got worried she reminded them anyway. Caden stayed nearby, waiting for her order.

  “Shoot at one of the towers,” she told him. “I’ll go in and stir something up.”

  “Careful,” he said. She looked at him, but he was already lining up a shot with his sniper rifle’s software.

  Caden took a couple of shots. A round of counterfire came in immediately.

  Crack. Crack. Ka-ching!

  An attendant exploded in front of them as incoming fire hit it. Caden stopped shooting and stepped behind a trunk.

  “That should do it,” Telisa said. She activated her stealth sphere and approached the outer fence.

  The return fire from Celaran machines within the base galvanized the battle sphere to action. It launched its own assault against the nearest tower.

  Kzap, kzap, kzap.

  Telisa did not know if Caden’s incitement had been necessary, but in any case the battle had begun. The Celaran tower was slagged in seconds, bringing down the fence nearby. Telisa saw more Celaran disks coming out of the buildings to engage.

  Kting. Crack. Crack. Bzing.

  The disk machines shot projectiles at the sphere but its powerful shields shrugged the fire off. Telisa saw evidence of some energy weapons being used, causing a shimmering in the air. Her attendants and link picked up noise at frequencies above visible light.

  Telisa ran through the open section of fence and headed along the inside perimeter. She was about thirty meters from the battle sphere. Her link showed her breaker claw ready. She felt the alien weapon could destroy the battle sphere if its shields were brought down. Did it know where she was? Failure could bring fatal retaliation.

  Maybe if I wait until the shields are absorbing fire... if the Celarans have enough left to give me an opening.

  Telisa did not have to wait long. Another group of gliders moved in from her left and concentrated their fire on the Vovokan machine. She saw the battle sphere’s shields flicker.

  Now!

  Telisa activated her breaker claw on the battle sphere.

  Kraaazap! Thwack thwack thwack.

  The shields held. The sphere struck back at the Celarans. Five or six of the security machines became flying heaps of slag that disintegrated in the air. Smoking parts rolled across the hard flat surface of the lot surrounding the buildings. Smoke started to obscure most of the complex before them.

  “Five help us,” she muttered.

  At least it didn’t hit me back.

  Telisa increased her distance. She wondered if she should go look for Siobhan but she decided to stick to the plan. Was the Vovokan battle sphere going to destroy the entire base? Would Siobhan get hurt wherever they had her held?

  “Telisa—” Caden said on their channel.

  “Blood and souls!” exclaimed Imanol.

  Okay, I’m missing something...

  Telisa looked up. Above the largest building, a long, flat shape hovered. Telisa realized it was the building where she had seen the doors in the floor and ceiling.

  Of course. The spacecraft! It’s real enough.

  The Vovokan sphere saw it too. The machine lanced out with energy weapons.

  Kraaazap zrap zrap!

  They had no effect. The hovering ship flickered as it unleashed something.

  The battle sphere’s shields failed and the machine dropped. It struck the ground. Several holes appeared on its surface, emitting sparks and smoke.

  Back off—

  KABOOM!

  The machine exploded across the field of pavement. Telisa was hurled back and landed roughly on the hard surface several meters away from where she had been standing.

  “We did it!” Caden transmitted. “Telisa, did you see that?”

  “Telisa?”

  “Where is she?”

  “Wait! I can see her! She’s hurt!” Imanol said.

  “What?” Telisa mumbled, stunned. She lifted her head and saw her body lying on the ground in plain sight.

  “Come with me!” Caden said.

  “Caden!”

  “He’s right! Go in!”

  Telisa went to sleep.

  Chapter 16

  Huornillel retreated from the Celaran stronghold when it was clear the new creatures were not making constructive progress. They were in fact much worse off than she was, having to hide like vermin on the base since their race did not have any exposure to Celaran civilization. The guardian machines did not recognize them as friend or foe.

  Huornillel enjoyed a straightforward mutual avoidance relationship with living Celarans, but her relationship with their guardian machines was much more complicated. It was a crazy mixture of dominance-avoidance with some of their static tools, where she enjoyed dominance, but the living-tools, the machines that emulated life, those operated on mutual avoidance unless Huornillel tried to go to the restricted spaces. Then everything fell apart and it became a confrontation relationship.

  Aliens. They are all totally crazy.

  ‘Contextual interrelational reaction’, she called it. Some of the primitive creatures on her homeworld operated on these principles: in some situations they would choose avoidance, in others, confrontation, in yet others they could coexist in dominance-avoidance pairs. Anything was possible and it could shift at any time. It was exactly why wild animals were considered dangerous. They were unpredictable. Wild animals, and aliens.

  Her toolkit observed something interesting from a Celaran interface she had studied and learned about. One of the alien visitors had been dropped off in the vine forest. It was alone.

  These others still operate in coordinated fashion. Therefore, the lone one is not the dominant one, provided it is isolated as I suspect.

  Could Huornillel intercept the lone one and establish a dominant relationship? Then that alien would become part of her network. If only she had been able to break their control protocols. That was proving very elusive. Still, it might be worth a try, she decided.

  Huornillel had been marooned on this planet for so long. What else did she have to do?

  ***

  Siobhan stood unsteadily on a vine and listened to the sounds of the alien forest. Her hands shook. She wondered if she had been drugged or if she suffered tremors from the ordeal. Even though she usually thrived on danger, she was not used to anything like she had gone through in the Celaran building. At some point after entering a new platform her memory ended. Then she had regained consciousness back in the forest, alone.

  “Telisa? Telisa can you hear me?”

  Siobhan tried to open a channel to Telisa but it did not work. If Telisa had been captured and released as she had been, the Celaran robots must have let the other PIT member
loose somewhere far from here. She tried to remember the range of a civilian link without public boosters. She did not think it was far. Less than a kilometer, maybe.

  Siobhan had her weapons and her pack. They had given her the tools she needed to survive, at least, though her stealth suit was dead. Totally out of power. She figured they did not want her to disappear on them again. Her hand went to her front zipper. They had started to take the suit off, then stopped. If she remembered correctly. They had stopped, hadn’t they?

  The vine forest had not been as intimidating before, when Siobhan had attendants and teammates all around her. Now, her link saw no services except those offered by her own equipment and weapons. She had no video feeds of what was going on around her.

  There could be something stalking me right now, and I wouldn’t know it.

  Siobhan glanced behind her at the thought. She wished she could activate her stealth suit.

  I don’t know how long I’ll be out here on my own. I need to be careful. Which direction should I go?

  She stared up at the system star overhead, shining between two massive leaves. Her link returned her approximate location based on the time of day and the angle of the star. The answer hurt. She could be as far as 25 kilometers from the last position of the New Iridar.

  Siobhan turned west toward the ship and started to walk. She held her laser pistol in her hand and her shock baton hung from her belt. She thought about the dangers they had encountered so far.

  Net creatures and bulbous silver things with tentacles. Wonderful.

  It got rougher. Siobhan felt drained of energy herself. Without an attendant to map a good way, she often found herself stuck out on the ever-shrinking end of a vine, or walking on a large one that twisted back the way she had come. At least with her link working, she would not get lost, even though there was nothing to connect to outside of her own tools. She stopped and drank some water. She had enough to last her the journey, provided she got home in good time.

  Does it ever rain in this awful place? I wonder if I can drink the sap of these things like those bat-creatures.

  A shot rang out through the forest. Then another. Siobhan dropped onto the waist-thick vine she was on and hugged it with her arms.

  Who’s shooting at me!?

  Siobhan did not see anything, but she heard something out in the forest. A crackling sound. It sounded almost like fire. She looked into the sky for signs of smoke. She did not see any from her positions.

  She aimed laser pistol back eastward and waited, prone atop the thick vine. Something came into view.

  The creature looked like a huge army ant. Except instead of an ant’s head, the foremost body part was dominated by a circular opening. Two wide black orbs sat on either side of the tube. Huge eyes? The thing had no mandibles or teeth.

  Then she saw another. And another. Within another ten seconds she saw seven altogether.

  My packets are fragged.

  Without moving a muscle, Siobhan let her pistol take a target signature from the creatures. She prepared it to fire on them but waited.

  Fight... run... or just sit here and don’t move.

  Siobhan told her stealth suit to activate in vain. It did not comply. She rose onto her knees and elbows, preparing to retreat.

  Kablam!

  The vine exploded in front of her. The next second she was hurtling downwards.

  Siobhan found herself lying on her back in a rotting pile of giant leaves. Her pistol was not in her hand. She grabbed her shock baton, trying to clear her head. She felt fear and confusion.

  Calm. Think. I have grenades.

  Siobhan talked to a grenade with her link and gave it the signature she had collected. It detached and moved ahead slowly. Siobhan did not give it the signal to attack.

  She heard the things coming. Siobhan’s stealth suit reported a new malfunction. One of its main processors had shut down, reducing its responsiveness to attack.

  So this is how I die. Equipment damaged from explosion. No power for stealth. Surrounded by alien critters. How the hell do those things shoot? That huge opening in their heads? Insane.

  For some reason she thought of sea divers who died in underwater caves when their flashlights all failed to operate.

  The first creature walked into sight. Another one came behind it. Though headed in her general direction, they did not seem to be coming right at her. The things were looking up into the trees.

  Is there something else up there?

  The creatures were each the size of a dog. She saw now that the things had long whiskers that barely touched the leaves and roots below them.

  They don’t see me. Now is a good time to use the grenade. But last time I moved it did not go well.

  Siobhan told the grenade to stand by. She lay frozen, waiting.

  As she watched, one of the creatures became agitated. But it was not at her. The thing was still looking up.

  Bang!

  Then the creature’s head exploded in sparks and smoke. The thing dropped dead, smoke pouring from the gaping orifice in its head.

  That thing just... launched a projectile and died.

  Siobhan suddenly thought she understood the thing. Like a bee willing to sting and die, this thing shot its mini-cannon and died in the act.

  So it brings down food from above. Flyers, too. Ah, but that means... something is coming to eat me.

  She had been “shot down” like a bird. Now she was chow lying on the forest floor waiting to be collected! Siobhan had another, even more dreadful thought.

  Only two grenades... should I save the last grenade for myself? Or can I kill myself with a shock baton? I can’t believe I traveled all this way and it comes to this. Caden! If I don’t make it I’ll never see him again.

  She accessed the baton’s documentation with her link and read through the warnings while the ground shooters walked by her. None of them seemed to target her again. They all were looking upwards, scanning for things to shoot. Siobhan concluded the baton could not kill her directly with its charge. Of course, if she could bash her own brains in with it, there was always that.

  Siobhan shed her defeatist line of thought and prepared to defend herself. She tried to stand. Her arms and legs were functioning thanks to the amazing protection of the suit, but it was hard to walk on the surface. She wobbled upright. Rotted leaves covered the area. Wherever she stepped, her foot broke through and slid into empty space below, filled only with mush or air pockets between the roots.

  Fine, I’ll roll, or crawl, or something. I can’t climb upwards without being shot again.

  Siobhan crashed through the forest. Each time her leg pushed through the surface detritus and sank deep in, she half expected some sub-surface monster to grab hold of it. She knew the Veer suit was tough. That helped calm her. Her usual fearless demeanor had been shaken.

  Siobhan made it past three spires before she saw the next creature. She knew instantly, this new thing was exactly what came after the shooters to clean up the fallen food. It looked like an armored pig with ant-legs and a wide set of mandibles. Hundreds of colorful sensor-hairs fanned out around its “mouth” that made it look like a terrifying combination of a tusked boar, an armadillo, and a peacock.

  Now or never. Climb or grenade or baton or die.

  She looked for the shooters. She could not see any. Siobhan knew if she started to climb, chances would go up that one could spot her above.

  She told her grenade to take it out. The device hurled forward. It followed a vine and made good progress at first, then it slipped off the side and fell into the bed of detritus. Siobhan heard the tiny click of its digger spines coming out. Then the grenade struggled to make its way forward. It became visible again, made it another meter, then fell into the mass of leaves and vines and roots again.

  The grenade was still closer than she wanted it, but she knew it had good directional blast control, and she had her suit. She would only have to cover her face, or at least look away. The alien seemed
to detect her. It moved for her, allowing the grenade to intercept.

  Ka-Boom!

  The thing exploded into pieces which rose, struck the leaves above, then rained back down. It was filled with purple fluid that dripped from the leaves and vines all around. As the detonation sound faded from her sonic-dampener-protected ears, Siobhan heard a new scuttling in the forest. The blast had agitated something. A lot of somethings.

  Please be running away...

  Two more of the awful scavenger things crawled into view. She thought she heard at least one more. They crawled toward her.

  Jammers. That was a mistake.

  More adrenaline poured into Siobhan’s system. She came alive. She found solid footing on a large root below the debris underfoot and held the baton ready. The first creature arrived. Its long sensor hairs brushed over the leaf nearest her. She held out the shock baton.

  “Back it!” she barked.

  The sensor hairs brushed the baton. The creature recoiled. It emitted a loud squawk that caused yet another adrenal burst in Siobhan.

  Then it charged.

  Siobhan only had time to shove the baton between the stubby things she assumed were mandibles. The baton reported a full discharge. The thing below her squawked again and thrashed.

  “Frackjammers!” she yelled. The other two things were coming quickly now.

  Siobhan brought up the shock baton and slammed it down onto her attacker. It sank in with a wet crunch. She saw more of the purple blood. She kicked the corpse back savagely, blocking the line of attack of another armored pig.

  The third darted in and grabbed her ankle in its jaws.

  The Veer suit distributed the bite well, but Siobhan felt significant pressure on her lower leg. It was just enough to creep her out but not enough to seriously hurt her leg. The baton crashed down again and delivered another shock charge. Her Veer suit insulated her from any of the current that might have traveled through her.

  The jaws refused to come off her ankle, though the scavenger beast stopped moving and leaked prodigious amounts of the bright ichor. Siobhan squared off against the third, though her right foot was hard to move with its extra load. This time, she had a nice clear swing, so she let go with her full strength. The crunching sound came loud and wet. The thing toppled aside next to its brothers, unmoving.