The Celaran Refuge (Parker Interstellar Travels Book 8)

by Michael McCloskey

  “What weaponry do the towers have?” Agrawal asked brusquely.

  “The wild creatures of the jungle can be held at a gentle distance on every sunny day, so the towers were designed to keep animals out of an area. We’ve increased their power tenfold, so they can cause Destroyer drones to collide with the white spires or one another.”

  Magnus saw another set of diagram pointers on the channel. He accessed them and saw specifications for a disk-shaped flyer. It looked like the guard machines the PIT team had encountered on Idrick Piper.

  “We’ve seen these disk machines before, back at an abandoned Celaran base,” Magnus said. “They use projectile weapons?”

  “If you guess the sap is sweet, you are correct. They were not weapons originally, but we have increased the velocity of their projectiles several times in the last few...” Deston paused. “Months,” came the translation. “Our scientists guessed that high-velocity projectiles would stop the machines, and they were right.”

  “Thank you for showing us these. Anything else?” Magnus asked.

  “There is always another insect on the other side of the leaf, and I have one more design, which I made during my time as defense scientist. Come this way.”

  The Celaran flitted away through a tangle of vines. Magnus followed more slowly, climbing around the foliage.

  “How long have you been a defense scientist?” Magnus asked as he tried to follow Deston.

  “The star moves above giving light and day, in my case for... seven Terran months. Soon I will trade my baton for another.”

  Magnus understood from the conversation Telisa had broadcast with the leaders that Deston meant he would be changing jobs.

  “Is that wise? Don’t you have valuable experience at building weapons?” Magnus asked.

  “A diseased vine can be ugly and that concept, weapon, is disturbing. I’ve made things that stop Destroyers. Now another must learn and I’ll stretch another direction.”

  Magnus walked out along another vine that took him closer to Deston, who was hovering twenty meters away in a small clearing among the vines. Magnus assumed Deston was waiting for him to catch up before darting off again.

  A rustling sound came from below. Magnus looked down. Six triangle-shaped doors opened upward from the detritus-littered ground, revealing a hexagonal opening about a meter on a side. Nestled within, a sharp rod pointed upward, mounted on a ball-and-socket arrangement for movement.

  “A hidden laser! I like it. How many of these are around here?” Magnus asked.

  “A sliver of light pouring through an opening in the leaves, it was my idea,” Deston said. “There once existed a creature in the forest that waited to catch those who fly above. It predated upon our ancestors. I have created 36 robotic copies of this creature that use lethal tools modeled after the energy beams of the Destroyers.”

  Natural for a peaceful race to look to predators of their past for weapon ideas. I should mention that to Telisa. She’ll find it fascinating.

  Magnus sent a snippet of the conversation to Telisa for her to read later. Then Magnus thought of the net monster and the alien creature that had attacked them with electricity on the other planet.

  “The creature you mention didn’t use lasers too, I hope. Are there dangerous things in the jungle my team should be aware of?”

  “The net-lion hunts among the shadows of the vines, but all the large predators and pack creatures are kept beyond the towers,” Deston said. Magnus assumed that net-lion was the best translation they had for the predator the PIT team had encountered.

  “Thank you for your help, Deston.”

  We’ve arrived into a war zone.

  Chapter 4

  Cilreth piloted the Iridar toward one of the three Celaran space bases in the system. She felt a keen interest to see the alien base. The structure Cilreth closed on was a stack of six large rings of ship bays. Each ring was made from six ship bays touching only at their rear edges. A hexagonal tunnel ran through the center of the stack of 36 bays, serving as a particle accelerator that could thrust the base around the system. Cilreth supposed the entire assembly was too unwieldy to be controlled with a gravity spinner.

  How many Celarans live there? A hundred? A thousand?

  The Celarans had requested that the Iridar join the Midway near the base so that the same Celaran engineers who had worked on the Midway could see the Vovokan spinner and cloaking systems. Since the rest of the team was busy working with the Celarans, she had taken the ship up by herself to let the Celarans examine it.

  Cilreth sat within her little work pod, surrounded by on-retina anchor points and equipment that made long off-retina stays comfortable.

  I hope we’re not making the same mistake we made with Shiny. Could the Celarans actually turn on us after they’ve learned about all our technology? Are they only playing nice because the Destroyers are after them?

  Cilreth supposed that the PIT team had found more evidence that the Celarans were peaceful than they ever had discovered with the Vovokans. The Celarans had never shot at them, even in self-defense, like Shiny had when he first encountered Terrans. On the other hand, Shiny had been in personal danger, whereas the PIT team had only ever threatened Celaran machines, not real Celarans.

  Unless we’ve seen Celaran cyborgs and we didn’t even know it!

  Admiral Sager requested a channel with Cilreth as the Iridar approached the collection of space hangars.

  “Admiral Sager, how are you? How is the Midway?”

  “We’ve made great progress on the repairs. The same appears true of the Celaran ships,” Sager reported. “Of course, we’re missing crew. That’s reduced morale as well as operational capacity.”

  “We’re able to communicate with the Celarans,” Cilreth said.

  “They’ve been talking to us for a few hours now,” Sager said. “Sometimes they’re hard to understand. It seems their main concern is the Midway’s lack of stealth technology. I think they want to fix that.”

  “We’ve decided to trust them,” Cilreth said. For better or for worse. “Let them onto the Midway. Let them make modifications if that’s what they want. The threat of a Destroyer attack is very real... and imminent.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Cilreth decided to contact the base. She requested a connection through the Iridar.

  A Terran link talking to a Vovokan ship using Terran comm protocols, asking it to send a Terran message to a Celaran base listening for a message in Terran protocols...

  The connection went through. The other side identified itself as “Celaran Base Control”.

  “This is the Iridar, joining the Midway as requested. I was wondering... the largest ship that came here had our only FTL communications capability. Since it was destroyed in the battle, I can’t send a message home to ask for reinforcements. Do you have a tachyon receiver base in this system?”

  Cilreth wondered if their translation service could handle such a complex question. Would the Celarans understand what a TRB was? Did the Celarans even use them?

  “Messages travel along the vines but cannot go where the vine does not go, and we are not able to speak with any outside this star system.”

  Hrm.

  “How do you pass information along to the rest of your civilization?”

  “Sharing light and life with those we know, there is no light to share with those we do not share life with.”

  “So you...” Cilreth’s message halted. She decided to try a different tack. “Will other Celarans be coming here to help you fight the Destroyers?”

  “When danger lurks in the forest, it is not wise to hope the vines will send help that one does not think can be sent. We haven’t seen others in a very long time.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Cilreth sent back.

  Well, we have a lot of attendants. We can send a message to Shiny.

  Cilreth opened a channel to Telisa back on the Celaran colony planet.

  “Yes?”

 
“Telisa, remember what Marcant pointed out about the attendants? They can sacrifice themselves to send a tachyonic message.”

  “You want to ask for help from Shiny? Sure. But don’t the Celarans have a TRB?”

  “They don’t. I’m surprised about it too. I think this colony has been separated from the rest of the civilization, assuming it still exists out there. They don’t seem to have the ability to talk with any other Celaran planets. When I asked about the rest of the Celaran race, I got a dodgy response. This colony may be isolated.”

  “Really? That’s weird. They’ve been straightforward about everything so far.”

  “Yes. I don’t know what’s up with it.”

  “I’ll ask Lee about it next time I see her. Send out an attendant and apprise Shiny of our situation. Request more battleships. At this point I don’t care if our relief is Vovokan or Space Force, we need all the help we can get.”

  “Will do.”

  ***

  Cilreth bolted awake in her quarters as a high-priority warning came to her link. It was the tactical. The map had many rules for generating alerts, and several of them had been triggered. She brought up the tactical in her personal view and saw a handful of flashing red points spread across it.

  The Destroyers are back already! We can only see a few at this range, but that must mean there are a lot of them.

  Cilreth rolled out of her sleep web and staggered toward the shower, which could fill with foam like a crash tube. A private link request came in from Telisa. Cilreth connected.

  “Go help them,” Telisa said. “Go help them now.”

  Sager and Telisa were on another channel which Cilreth had access to, so she joined that one as well. She slipped into the shower and closed her eyes to focus on her PV.

  “You’re weapons free, Admiral,” Telisa was saying. “Engage the Destroyers as you see fit. I don’t know if it makes sense to coordinate with the Iridar. Your two ships are very different in so many ways.”

  Cilreth kept concentrating on the tactical. It was woefully empty. She saw the three Celaran space bases as dense green clusters of space hangars and ships on her map. The Iridar charged its storage rings near one of the bases, ready to join any maneuvers the Celarans might make. She activated the Vovokan cloaking system.

  They don’t have full ship-to-ship communications working yet, Cilreth thought. I’m sure they have a lot of probes and satellites looking for enemies.

  “Telisa, if you can ask Lee to hook me up with their tacticals...”

  “I’m on it,” Telisa sent back.

  Cilreth wondered if the bases had defenses. She thought it likely they could cloak as the probe ship had been able to do, but the Destroyers probably knew that trick. Or did they? She remembered Celaran ships had used their ability to hide in the earlier battle.

  More data flooded into the Iridar’s tactical map. Cilreth saw it came from the Celarans. A flood of red contacts became visible across the whole system, headed toward the planet with the Celaran colony. The Celaran fleet still clustered around the bases in three roughly equal groups.

  I hope this means they can see where I am, too.

  The Iridar neared the base Cilreth had come to visit. One large Celaran ship was accelerating out of each bay. Some of them looked to be only partially constructed.

  Another squadron of smaller Celaran vessels formed up between the base and the incoming fleet. Cilreth saw a series of concentric spheres surrounding the nearby base on her tactical. The Celarans ships were moving out hastily though they were still inside the smallest of three spheres.

  What could those be? Weapon ranges?

  Cilreth thought frantically. They had to be weapon ranges... what else could they be? EM countermeasure umbrellas?

  Cilreth looked over the starbase. She supposed there were Celarans on the base that they wanted to defend. A quick scan only told her that she was blocked from seeing what was inside. She used precious seconds to examine the exterior of the base.

  Six ports at each corner of the hexagonal bay openings...

  The Iridar’s sensors scanned the openings carefully. Cilreth looked over the findings.

  Aha. High energy weapon emitters. The base will provide fire support... probably anti-missile point defense? One more reason to think the rings represented offensive or defensive fire ranges.

  The Destroyer fleet broke into seven formations. The three largest forces, each composed of dozens of vessels, headed for each of the three Celaran bases. Cilreth tried to guess what the other four might be doing.

  They need to clean the system of Celaran satellites. One might be a reserve force. What else? That one is... probably headed for the planet!

  The Celaran ships accelerated away to interdict a larger number of Destroyer ships on an intercept course with the base. Cilreth set the Iridar on course to follow after them. The gravity spinner moved her smoothly with the ship so that she felt nothing, despite hitting an acceleration otherwise unsurvivable by Terrans. The Iridar could not match the acceleration of the Celarans even though Cilreth fed a huge part of the energy budget into her spinner.

  Cilreth watched the tactical nervously as the Iridar joined the formation of Celaran ships. The intercept group closed on the threatening Destroyer force. Cilreth received a high priority target request from the Celarans: it was a large Destroyer ship. The Celaran ships started to snipe at the target. Cilreth allotted twenty percent of her stored energy and added the Iridar’s fire to theirs. After long seconds, an explosion became visible. They had killed it.

  The Celarans did not break off. They continued to close on the superior numbers of the Destroyers ahead.

  Are they going to sacrifice themselves?! Because, by Cthulhu, I’m not going to!

  Cilreth’s fear soared. She thought about breaking away, then felt ashamed. Still, she plotted an escape course as she battled with her fear. The Celaran group passed the last line around the base on the tactical; whatever support perimeter that was, they were now beyond it.

  Am I obligated to die with these ships? What about the PIT team? What about me?

  The Destroyer force launched a massive cloud of ordnance, which headed for the Celarans. Energy weapons fire arrived first, causing the Celarans to begin weaving erratically.

  No no no no no. I’m supposed to be the safe one.

  The Iridar received a set of flight instructions in the final seconds as Cilreth struggled with her decision. At the same time, she looked at the course suggestions long enough to determine they came from the Celarans. She only had time to approve one existing plan: hers or theirs. Her mind froze at the edge of panic.

  I’m representing my whole race... so dead...

  Cilreth accepted the Celarans’ course plan. If she had been given time to think about the decision, she probably would have given in to fear and taken her own.

  The Celarans’ ship formation, now including the Iridar, opened like a many-petaled flower before the oncoming missile swarm. Forty percent of the missiles diverted to pursue the ships. The rest remained on course for the Celaran base.

  Cilreth took stock of the situation as the Iridar’s point defense started to bite into the missiles in pursuit.

  Cthulhu’s tentacles, I attracted more Destroyer missiles than the others!

  The Iridar, as agile as it was, could not match the Celaran ship’s maneuvers. More missiles had had time to lock onto her.

  “Telisa, this may be the last thing you hear from me—” Cilreth sent. The Iridar continued to fire on the missiles closing in. Cilreth saw six or seven of them drop off her tactical. The others were seconds away.

  The Iridar crossed into the Celaran base’s outer perimeter line on the tactical. The Celaran base started to fire.

  I have to keep maneuvering to keep the Destroyers’ energy weapons from hitting me from four light seconds out; yet if I dodge randomly, the base can’t hit my pursuers, either.

  Cilreth set in an avoidance pattern, then transmitted it to the Celarans i
n the open, using Terran protocols. The accuracy of the base’s weapons improved drastically once they knew where she would dodge next. She hoped the Destroyers would be unable to understand the alien transmissions.

  Security through obscurity.

  The base continued to fire on missiles and other ordnance that closed in on the Celaran ships. Suddenly Cilreth remembered the huge number of weapons that had locked onto the base. She saw them on the tactical, still closing on their target.

  That base is sacrificing itself to keep the ships alive. But without the base, they can’t make more ships... without their ships, I guess the ones on the planet would be helpless. If only ships survive, at least they could leave...

  The Iridar bucked as the gravity spinner kicked into levels too high for the control systems to smooth out. Different parts of the ship were now experiencing different levels of force from the spinner, which threatened to turn the Iridar into a kilometer-long piece of metal spaghetti.

  I’m gonna be killed eight ways from extinction...

  “A vine in shadows is hard to see, so Cilreth can turn and hide under a leaf,” a Celaran said on one of Cilreth’s open channels.

  What? Oh.

  Cilreth diverted power from the Iridar’s spinner and fed it to EM cloaking. At the same time, Cilreth had the ship drop out what remained of Magnus’s robot lab from a cargo bay. Irrationally, a part of her brain already started working on how to break the news to him.

  That’s a problem for the living, Cilreth told herself.

  The Iridar hurtled on for a few seconds, then one of the missiles found the debris and detonated. The Iridar struggled to keep the sudden radiation wave from reflecting off its outer hull and exposing its position to the enemy. Cilreth held her breath. The ship’s interior plunged into darkness. Her tactical dropped out, leaving an empty pane in her off-retina view. Cilreth heard her own rapid breathing in the confines of the tube until a mask clamped over her face and it filled with foam.