The Celaran Probe (Parker Interstellar Travels Book 7)

by Michael McCloskey

  Yep, she’s as impatient as I am. At least the robots are acting the same as before. They haven’t gone crazy.

  An attendant exited the field and sent a long stream of data. Caden thought that was a good sign. He dug into it, but Telisa was faster.

  “We have data on the inside,” she announced to everyone.

  ***

  After a long and agonizing week, Telisa called a meeting to discuss their progress.

  “So here’s what we know, or what we think we know. The Celarans, Cthulhu, and the Five have done everything in their power to keep us from the secrets of this ship. We’ve worked hard and we don’t have much to show for it.”

  Telisa referenced panes with diagrams as she talked, sending pointers to the PIT team.

  “I verified details of the ship’s construction against both the Celaran ground structures and the glimpse of the small ship we saw. We’re definitely dealing with Celaran tech here.”

  Caden saw the panes she presented showed a series of common features. Also, the material of the small ship’s skin back on Idrick Piper matched the dull-colored parts of the probe’s outer layer.

  Telisa shared a map of the innards of the probe ship. Data from various attendants that had entered comprised most of the map; the rest was filled in from guesswork. Not only had there been no light inside the ship, some kind of dampening field had tried to keep exploring attendants blind. The sophisticated Vovokan machines had responded by varying the frequency of their emissions rapidly. Some of the attendants had been captured by Celaran machines in the ship and ejected. Through repeated attempts, the PIT team managed to slowly gather a three dimensional radar map of the inside.

  The resistance of the probe ship to their attendant incursions had stiffened to the point that they could not gather any more data without resorting to violence. Telisa had called a stop to the exploration.

  “Our little friends have mapped out enough of the ship to show this huge space here,” Telisa said. “Now, since the ship is Celaran, it can’t surprise us that they like big spaces to fly around in. But see these patterns? These are stockpiles of various materials against this wall. Stockpiles that used to extend... all the way to here.”

  “Materials that it used up?” Cilreth said.

  “Yes. It’s almost out of resources,” Imanol said. “We assumed the Destroyer was evidence the colony was stopped by force. And that’s one strong explanation. The fact this probe ship is almost out of resources makes things more complicated.”

  “So it could have simply run out of materials to build with?” Caden asked.

  “Maybe it’s as simple as that,” Telisa said. “I would expect the Celarans gave it enough to complete some number of colonies, at least every colony it starts, but maybe the Destroyers caused enough damage to keep it from finishing this one.”

  “You don’t sound like you believe this,” Siobhan said.

  Telisa smiled.

  “I think that theory doesn’t give the Celarans enough credit. If this is a Von Neumann kind of colonizer, it might have been waiting to be refilled with materials harvested from the planet before it went on to the next target. The attack may have prevented that replenishment, so now it’s stuck.”

  “So it’s useless?” Imanol asked.

  “It ran out of colonization resources,” Telisa corrected him. “Turns out, it can still run the gravity spinner.”

  “I hope the colonists received word of the attack and turned back,” Cilreth said. “Otherwise, they might still be on their way.”

  “I wonder if a scout ship or specialized explorers came ahead of this one, or if this probe thing finds its own planets,” Jason said. “I never thought about it before but there are a lot of sub tasks that could have their own kind of vessel. There could be an exploration ship, then a Celaraforming ship, then the base builder ship, and finally, the Celaran transports.”

  “Oh no, Mr. Classifier is at it again,” Imanol said.

  “Ah, but remember what we know about the Celarans?” Telisa prompted.

  “Yes,” Cilreth joined in. “They love to use flexible, overloaded designs with multiple functions! There’s a good chance this thing serves as probe, terraformer, builder and colonizer all in one.”

  “That would be my best guess. So there could be tons of Celaran embryos, eggs, or seeds in there. Whatever new Celarans come from. That would be worth hiding and protecting vigorously,” Telisa said.

  “Should we bring it back to Earth with us?” Caden asked.

  Cilreth sighed. “It’s too large to be enveloped by New Iridar’s gravity spinner. We’d either fail to surpass light speed, or else we would rip it apart in gravity eddies and bring the pieces back home with us.”

  “How about programming? Can we control it, give it a destination?” Telisa asked.

  “I’ve tried eight ways from extinction to figure out how to interface with it,” Siobhan said. “Celarans don’t use specialized processor components as we do. Their circuitry is built right into the materials. The only way we could even tell is by noticing what we thought at first were just impurities in the materials. Turns out, Celaran tools have controls built right into them at the molecular level.”

  “What about conductors? Insulators?”

  “Conductive materials have insulated componentry inside. Insulators have tiny antenna lines going to the surface. Structures that have to be microscopically analyzed. I’m not sure they have software in these remote components. It’s more like they have a software that designs how these things are made, then it’s all hardware from there.”

  “But they’re so flexible, software should be a part of it,” Jason said. “Isn’t software the ultimate way to make hardware multi-purpose?”

  “Their tools are amazingly versatile, but maybe only in pre-planned ways?” Siobhan said. “They might be great at making a wrench into a laser and a fire extinguisher, but maybe every function is mapped out and can’t be changed on the fly.” She shook her head. “I don’t know. They’re aliens, after all.”

  “Can we get the probe to use its own spinner, somehow wire up our own control system to it?” Telisa asked.

  “We can barely even get it to open a hatch,” Cilreth said. “We don’t understand the Celaran control systems... at all. It’s not Caden and Siobhan’s fault; understanding alien computers is inherently difficult. Remember, we’ve had Shiny’s help to get us bootstrapped with Vovokan machines. This is a huge job and we started from scratch.”

  “We have to go home without it,” Telisa said flatly. She did not continue. Somehow Caden felt her despair, though he could not see it on her face or hear it in her voice.

  Cilreth wanted to ask. Caden could see it. So he asked.

  “Then we don’t have anything to bring Shiny?”

  “We can give him Vandal,” Imanol said.

  Siobhan rolled her eyes.

  “Well, could we leave him on the planet, at least?” asked Imanol.

  “No! He’s a sentient creature, show some compassion,” Siobhan said.

  “The lights are on in your quarters just as bright as in ours,” Imanol said.

  “I regret he’s here, but we had to save him,” Telisa said. “He was marooned on that planet. I just don’t know where to take him now. Maybe Shiny will know what to do. At the very least, Shiny has the AI, so he has the resources to provide a good environment for Vincent.”

  “Cthulhu save us if Vincent gets to pray to the AI!” Cilreth exclaimed.

  “He won’t,” Telisa said dismissively. “I’m going to give Shiny the location of the probe ship. It’s a big prize. Cilreth, clean out the logs of any reference to the small ship we found on Idrick Piper. I want that one for myself.”

  “The attendants saw it,” Cilreth said.

  “Try your best. Supposedly they’re our attendants. If we have to, we could deactivate them, put them on ice for our trip back to Earth so they can’t tell him anything.”

  “Maybe we should leave them out here,
” Caden said.

  Telisa was silent for a moment.

  “Yes. Even better. We leave the attendants here to watch the probe ship. Everyone, we have to clean up any trace of that other ship. This probe ship, or colony ship, or whatever it is, this is Shiny’s. We’ll provide him everything we’ve scanned and learned, and he can come pick it up.”

  “It could even be good we can’t take it with us,” Siobhan said. “He has to give you Magnus to learn what we found where.”

  “At least for a time. He won’t keep his word,” Cilreth said.

  Telisa nodded but said nothing.

  Chapter 6

  The New Iridar returned to the Solar System. Three months of time had passed on Earth in their absence, although less than that had passed in ship’s time on the New Iridar. As the Terrans had advanced, so had the pace of their civilization; three months counted as a very long time in the political environment of Earth.

  The ship’s feeds were open to all. Imanol sat in his quarters, eager to see what had happened to Earth since they had embarked for Rorka Cartur. He brought up a strategic level map and tried to gather it all in at once.

  I bet everyone is awake to see what The Shining One has done to our ancestral home.

  Their Vovokan shuttle connected to Shiny’s ships and began streaming huge amounts of data. Imanol saw Shiny had made more ships. They dotted the system, though none of them had approached the planets. They lurked on the outskirts of inhabited places. Hundreds of Space Force ships appeared on their shared map too.

  “I see a lot of Space Force activity here,” Cilreth said on a common channel. “Should we try to hide?”

  “Yes. Just out of paranoia,” Telisa said.

  Imanol linked into Earth’s massive tachyon receiver base, the center of all shared Core World network traffic. He connected to his news services and started to scan.

  Ambassador Shiny? Blood and souls. Really?

  For some odd reason, Shiny, as the new ruler of Earth, held the title of ‘ambassador’. It seemed to be rooted in some initial misinterpretation in the days after his arrival, before it had been clear exactly what he had accomplished.

  Indeed, Shiny ruled Earth now. The UNSF functioned only under his many heels.

  Amazing. Earth has been conquered by a bloody alien tyrant.

  Somehow the previous domination of Earth by the Trilisk seemed less real. Most people had not even known about it. The new situation contrasted that: Shiny ruled out in the open.

  Imanol searched for the anti-Shiny sentiment in the network. At first he did not see any.

  “Censoring the net, are we Shiny?” Imanol muttered as he sat, eyes closed, focusing on his PV.

  Then he found what he sought.

  Aha! Even Shiny can’t squelch the voices of Earth’s billions!

  One man in Madrid complained that Shiny had mis-prioritized his son’s birthday party. It was an incarnate event, and a large number of material transports had delayed guests by as much as an hour. Another person in Manchester said that Shiny had allowed his unoccupied summer house to go without maintenance and the roof had leaked enough water to damage some furniture.

  “What? Must be a few complaints planted to seem authentic? Ridiculous. Is anyone buying this purple conductive paste?” he said to the others.

  Imanol winced. He was starting to sound too much like Jason.

  “This is crazy...” Caden said distantly.

  Imanol did not feel brushed off; he understood that everyone was still processing their own discoveries. They were not ready to share, since it was too early for the big picture to emerge for anyone. It was at least clear that the others were as amazed as he was.

  Imanol moved on to other topics. He verified what the map had already told him: The Space Force had more ships than ever before. The build up had apparently been completed. He read a story about how supplies for the Space Force were now being provided by Shiny from the asteroid belt. Earth was free of its burden of producing new ships and supplying them. Ample resources were coming in from the rest of the solar system to supply Earth. ‘The days of shortfalls of any kind were over’, said some bureaucrat or another.

  The social entertainment scene was alive and bigger than ever. Imanol frowned. It was typical of Core Worlders to be obsessed with their virtual and incarnate entertainment. With robot workers bearing the brunt of dull work, citizens had little of meaning to occupy their time. It was an age of virtual world makers, entertainers, and leisure seekers.

  Imanol’s mouth dropped open at his next discovery. The top virtual social space of the week: ‘The Vovokan Caverns, Location Seventeen’. A billion people had visited the virtual reproduction of Shiny’s homeworld.

  “Puh-leeeeze skewer me with a shock harpoon,” Imanol writhed. “No! What has Shiny done to these poor people!”

  “Imanol?”

  It was Jason.

  “Are you seeing what this incomalcon has done to our homeworld!” Imanol replied. “No one dares resist him. They can’t even speak ill of him.”

  “Apparently he’s neither incompetent nor malcontent,” Cilreth said. “I have to say I’m finding some disturbing things. Ambassador Shiny is... well, he’s the most popular leader Earth has seen in a century. Longer, actually.”

  “What? Don’t believe it for a second! That bastard mind controlled everyone with his damn AI. Or something. He’s a Vovokan snake! Blood and souls, I swear I’ll—”

  “Calm down. We’ll do something. Telisa has to be seeing this all right now, too,” Jason said.

  “I won’t rest until this is fixed,” Imanol vowed.

  “I’m going to go into one of his virtual adventure spaces,” Jason said. “It’s all the rage here, if any of this is to be believed. All my friends are saying how amazing it is. Do you think it’s safe?”

  “I bet it’s how he controls minds. Go ahead, you be the guinea pig. I’ll tell Cilreth to cut your privileges way back, in case you get brainwashed,” Imanol said.

  “Okay, I won’t then.”

  “No! I wasn’t being facetious. I really want you to be our test subject.”

  “Uh, thanks.”

  “Well do you have a better idea? I’m not connecting to any of this stuff.”

  “If he’s using mind control I don’t think there’s going to be any dodging it,” Cilreth said. “He wouldn’t have to resort to any particular environment you had to connect to. He’s got the damn AI, he could probably just wish everyone to love him and it would happen.”

  “Well it hasn’t happened to me yet!” Imanol said.

  “Good. Then you’re our guinea pig, Imanol,” Telisa said. “If you start gushing about him then we’ll all know we’re toast.”

  “You’re not worried?” Imanol sent Telisa privately.

  “I have lots of things to worry about,” she replied.

  “You don’t know if Shiny will give you Magnus because we couldn’t bring the probe back here,” Imanol sent her.

  “True,” she replied. “I must be very transparent.”

  “No. It’s what I would be thinking about, too,” Imanol said.

  “I’m making arrangements to meet Shiny.”

  “What should we do?”

  “I’ll have a plan for you soon.”

  Imanol went back to monitoring the news feeds and social channels. It would take a while to sift through everything, especially the explosion of stories right after the appearance of Ambassador Shiny. Earth had reacted with panic, then anger, then curiosity. From the outside, it looked as if Shiny had simply won over the population as a genuine liberator. But Imanol knew from history, there was seldom anything so simple and wonderful as a benevolent liberator.

  Something else bothered Imanol. Memories of horrible creatures slithering in the dark had been haunting him. The temple. He checked for stories about the small island where he had fought for his life on his last mission on Earth. The search did not uncover anything.

  Earth doesn’t know what was dow
n there, Imanol thought. But I bet Shiny found out about it. Did he find another AI there? Is he using it to control the populace of Earth?

  Imanol knew he had to find out.

  I promised myself I would never go back there. Blood and souls.

  Imanol recalled that Telisa was making her plan. He decided he should ask her in person quickly. He left his quarters and tracked her down to her quarters. He told the door he had arrived and waited. It opened. Telisa met him.

  “Hello,” Imanol said. He found it difficult to meet her eye.

  “What’s wrong, Imanol?” Telisa said. She waved him into her quarters. He heard a surprising amount of compassion in her voice. He had thought she barely tolerated him on the team.

  He cleared his throat. It felt weird to be in her quarters. As far as he knew, only Magnus had ever gone into her room, though certainly not here on the New Iridar.

  “I’d like to see what became of the temple, and what Shiny made of that place,” he said. “It seems clear to me Shiny is using some kind of mind control.”

  “And you think it’s got to be Trilisk mind control.”

  He nodded.

  “Then go there and find out what you can,” Telisa said. “Take Jason if you want.”

  Imanol hesitated again.

  “I have a... mental difficulty. That place really hit me in a bad spot. I think I could get in if I could somehow get a hold of a stealth suit. Just one person would reduce the chances of being caught.”

  Besides, how could I take anyone else into that place?

  Telisa nodded. “I see. I got you covered,” she said. She pulled a small sphere out of her Veer suit and handed it to him. It was a third larger than an attendant. “You can use my invisibility device from Vovok.”

  Imanol took the sphere. His link showed him it had services.

  “You built a link interface for it,” he noted aloud.

  “Exactly. It’s very handy.”

  “Thank you so much. This should help me immensely,” he said. “I owe you... more than I already owe you.”