The Celaran Refuge (Parker Interstellar Travels Book 8)

by Michael McCloskey

She started to search for discarded weapons in the debris, but a glimpse of movement overhead caught her attention. She looked into the smoke-filled sky. Instead of a bright orb with scintillating beams of light, Telisa saw a dark shape flying above. Its shape was familiar... the silhouette was like that of a ship she had seen over the hardtop on Idrick Piper.

  A Celaran scout ship!

  Though Telisa could not see anything coming from the ship in the visible light range, her attendant reported high frequency energy weapons firing from the ship before it disappeared into a bank of smoke.

  That giant Destroyer can take more than the Five Entities can dish out! It should be dead by now.

  Two more disk machines buzzed through the vines at incredible speed, passing near Telisa. They were lost in the bright light of the Destroyer’s surface.

  Vrrrrrrr-tat-tat. Crack! Crack!

  The small Celaran ship emerged from a column of smoke and fired a long series of projectiles toward the Destroyer. Telisa could not tell what they were, but they seemed effective. The Destroyer’s hum rose to a mechanical scream, then it blossomed into an expanding ball of black smoke.

  Brrrrrooooom!!!

  The ground shook. The Destroyer’s explosive end actually reduced its brilliance. The sky lost most of its reddish cast.

  The Celaran scout ship had been hit. The previously graceful craft spun out of control. Then its front dipped, struck a support spike from the ground, and flipped over before slamming into the jungle. There was no explosion, but Telisa had no doubt the ship was destroyed.

  Telisa looked at the tactical. The entire shared map showed one big Destroyer on the far side of the ruined colony, 10 medium Destroyers, and 15 drones.

  Another one? It was all the battle spheres and Celarans could do to kill this one!

  The Vovokan battle spheres set course for the last colossal Destroyer. Telisa realized her position would put her behind the spheres—a dangerous spot. Once the Destroyer started to fire, she might well be vaporized by any slivers of energy that got through. She started to run at an angle toward the new flank of the battle sphere formation.

  Telisa ran over mounds of ruined vegetation, between broken support spikes, and beside smoldering tree houses. Suddenly she thought of Magnus.

  Are the others even alive? They’re not on the tactical.

  “Magnus, are you there?” she asked. There was no answer.

  Telisa denied the implications and just ran faster. She heard the spheres open fire on the Destroyer.

  Kzap, kzap, kzap, kzap.

  Bright light overcame Telisa’s eyes twice, but her host body did not remain blind for long. The jungle looked like a burning sports field behind the battle spheres, which remained intact. Or had they? Telisa watched them carefully.

  Kzap, kzap... kzap... kzap.

  The spheres have slowed down... they’re not releasing energy bursts as quickly now.

  Like before, the spheres were not able to kill the alien war machine outright. Telisa still did not see any of the Celaran disk machines, either.

  We’re going to lose unless I do something.

  Telisa took stock of her options. She had herself—super-strong, super-fast—but still only flesh and bone. She had her cloaking sphere, which meant she could get close. Other than that, it was just her breaker claw and an attendant.

  Telisa opened her pack and took out a general adhesive. She applied it to the breaker claw and told her attendant to stop orbiting so she could grab it. Then she stuck the alien weapon to the attendant and told it to fly toward the Destroyer and activate the breaker claw on the enemy. It zipped off, staying low.

  Telisa turned to run. She watched the tactical as she moved. Bright lights flashed behind her as the Vovokan battle spheres traded more salvos with the Destroyer.

  The tactical reported one of the battle spheres as disabled. Telisa turned to get a look from across the jungle-turned-burning-plain. The Vovokan battle sphere had been reduced to a smoking pool of slag surrounded by burning heaps of vegetation. The other two spheres started to retreat. The Destroyer moved to pursue.

  That’s right... pay attention to them, Telisa thought as she leaped over another pile of burned vines. The attendant was out of contact, drowned out by the enemy jamming. She thought it should have arrived by now. Telisa stopped and dropped to the ruined, smoking ground.

  When the shock wave came, it hurt as much as Telisa feared it would.

  Chapter 7

  Siobhan lay across the curved top of a greenish-white support spike, many meters above the ground. Her position was just outside the colony, beyond a pair of ruined force towers. When the fight became dire, she had moved here with the spike between herself and the colony. She pulled herself up and surveyed the Celarans’ home.

  “Frag city,” she whispered. What had been a verdant settlement hidden in the vines had become a plain of blackened heaps, interspersed with scarred and broken vine spikes. Siobhan estimated she could see a half a kilometer, and only the plumes of smoke prevented her line of sight from extending even farther.

  It looks like a tactical nuclear weapon struck the colony.

  She checked her suit. It detected an increase in background radiation, but at safe levels.

  Caden exchanged a horrified look with her from another spike 40 meters to her left. Siobhan told her Veer suit’s helmet to retract. She tested a breath.

  “What’s that smell?” Siobhan asked.

  “Probably atomized vegetation,” Caden said across a private channel. He followed her example and tested the air, then coughed. “They’ve been wiped out,” he said mournfully.

  Siobhan saw the PIT team channel was still up. A handful of attendants remained alive out there, serving as link boosters. The channel showed herself, Caden, Magnus, and Marcant.

  Did we lose anyone?

  Siobhan was not just worried about Telisa and Jason. Awful stories came to her mind about people whose links had kept them on channels for minutes or hours after they died. She also wondered about Cilreth, who had been in the ship above the planet when the Destroyer ships had come. Was she dead?

  “This is Siobhan and Caden, we’re still alive,” she transmitted. “Anyone?”

  “This is Magnus. I’m with Marcant. We made it, though just barely. Stay sharp, there may be Destroyers left here yet.”

  They waited for other replies. Nothing happened for twenty long seconds.

  “Telisa and Jason may be outside of range,” Magnus said, though his voice did not sound confident. “I think Cilreth bugged out when things got hairy up near the space bases. She’ll be back if she can make it in safely.”

  “What about the Celarans?” asked Siobhan.

  “They fled into the jungle, remember?” Magnus said. “They haven’t returned.”

  “Are they...” Siobhan let her question drop off.

  “I don’t know. They can’t all be dead. Take your gliders. Go find them,” Magnus ordered. “We’ll search for Jason and Telisa.”

  “Got it,” Siobhan said confidently. As she looked around her confidence disappeared.

  Where in the hell are our gliders? Where is our tree?

  “There were more on the ship,” Caden pointed out helplessly.

  “We could split up and look for our gliders.”

  “No way, absolutely not,” Caden said adamantly. “We stay together.”

  Caden slid down his smart rope to the ground and landed in a puff of ash. His Veer suit’s helmet snapped back over his head. Siobhan reactivated her helmet before she dropped to the ground. They staggered forward.

  Siobhan and Caden had fought the Destroyer drones within the colony until the medium Destroyers had closed and started to kill off the Storks. Then they had left their gliders behind and ran for it. Though the gliders would now be buried in debris, if the devices still functioned, their services would show up in her link when she entered their range.

  “My link says we were over there,” Siobhan sent to Caden.

&nbs
p; “We’re almost there,” he verified.

  Siobhan looked out across the ruined terrain again.

  Those poor creatures. This was their home. Will they come with us to Earth? Or just live in space?

  Her link did not pick up her glider pack as they arrived.

  “They could have been destroyed,” she said.

  “The range might be reduced by the rubble,” Caden countered.

  “If we don’t have our gliders...”

  “Yours can’t be far.”

  “What makes you—”

  “I just got a ping on mine.”

  Caden slipped down into a crevice under a fallen support spike and retrieved his glider. Though it was dirty, its self-diagnostics reported full function.

  They set to digging through the piles of burned vegetation. An acrid smell assaulted Siobhan whenever she opened her helmet, but her Veer suit did not alert her to any powerful toxins in the air. She supposed that the Celaran vines simply made that smell when they burned.

  Caden pulled Siobhan’s glider from the mess. “Got it!”

  “Hrm, you’re good at this,” Siobhan said, deflecting irritation at her inability to find either glider suit.

  They struggled through the ruined terrain back toward the vines that hung across the support spikes at the perimeter of the destruction. There were no towers left to launch from, so they would have to take off from a spike.

  “I’m not sure what we’ll tell them. ‘We killed the invaders, but your colony is gone’?”

  “Yeah, no easy way about it,” Caden said, taking her point.

  Siobhan came to the first spike that still had vines clinging to it and started to climb. Every few meters she glanced over at the devastation. The landscape was surreal, with too much light and too few vines. She felt more pity for the Celarans.

  Near the top, Siobhan took stock of her lift options: her glider suit had a half charge left, she had two attendants, and a Celaran lift baton.

  “I guess I’ll use this up first,” she told Caden, showing him the baton.

  He nodded. “I’ll help you launch.”

  Siobhan deployed her glider wings and braced herself against the spike. Caden looped a smart rope around some adjacent vines to form a loose “bowstring” which he could control to add energy to her launch. Siobhan let her attendants orbit her and held the Celaran baton ahead of her in both hands.

  “Ready?” Caden asked.

  “Three... two... one... go!”

  Siobhan shot up into the smoky sky.

  “Destroyers, here I am,” she said to herself, looking across the wreckage. If the enemies still lurked about, she would make a fine target for them. She started to circle, allowing her suit to steadily gain altitude with extra boost from the baton.

  Caden rose more sluggishly after her. He left the smart rope behind, presumably with the location marked in his link for retrieval later. His legs kicked, sending energy into the glider suit’s structure which cleverly diverted the energy into thrust.

  Once they had gained an altitude which allowed them to see over a wide swatch of the canopy, they headed off into the untouched jungle in the direction many of the Celarans had fled. Siobhan wondered how far they might have traveled.

  “We’re moving slowly compared to the Celarans,” Caden said, revealing his parallel line of thought. “If they don’t stop, we won’t catch them.”

  “If some Celaran spacecraft survived, they should be able to see the battle is over,” Siobhan pointed out.

  They glided for twenty minutes. Siobhan thought of the wild creatures that might have been living beyond the towers. She wondered if the net-creature or the electrical predator were native to the Celaran home planet. Would those creatures be living here, too?

  Siobhan saw a group of dark shapes among the vines.

  “There! I see four Celarans!”

  “Lead me. I’m on your tail,” Caden said.

  They swooped down to talk to the Celarans. The aliens darted through the vines and disappeared.

  “I think those were just some of the feral gliders,” Caden said.

  “Nope. They were too large,” she said, even though the same thought had occurred to her when they fled.

  “Then the Celarans are afraid of us too?” Caden said.

  “It’s been traumatic,” Siobhan said. She switched to a link broadcast.

  “It’s just Siobhan and Caden. The Destroyers have been stopped!” she said.

  “Sickness on the leaves. Sickness on the leaves,” came a reply. “Stay away!”

  “Okay, we won’t come closer,” Siobhan said. “What do you mean, sickness? It’s just us.”

  “If the leaves are tainted, then so are those who land upon them, and it’s the same with our friends as the leaves,” said a Celaran. Siobhan could not see who spoke.

  “Vines afire! Vines contaminated! The Destroyers have poisoned the colony. We can never return,” said another.

  “Does he mean literally poisoned, or...” Caden asked Siobhan privately.

  “I think so! That smell might be it. We dug through all those vines... we smell like that too, I think,” Siobhan said.

  “I’m sorry,” Siobhan broadcast. “We’ll come back after we’ve cleaned our suits.”

  I hope it doesn’t make us sick... I doubt it. We’re too different from them.

  “What now? A body of water?” Caden asked.

  “Probably, but I think it’ll be dangerous to stray that far on our own. And the others will have to clean themselves, too, so we may as well go as a group.”

  A message came in on the PIT channel. It was Cilreth.

  “I’m back,” she transmitted. “Headed into... what’s left. The tree is gone, but I’ll be where it was.”

  “I’m searching for Telisa,” Magnus said. His voice was level, but Siobhan imagined the pain he must be feeling. “Marcant is looking at what we have left, hardware-wise.”

  “We’ve found some surviving Celarans,” Siobhan chimed in. “They can’t come back. The Destroyers poisoned the area. They can’t even get close to us because it’s all over our suits.”

  “Then get to the Iridar and we’ll clean you up right away!” Cilreth urged. “Who knows what that stuff’s doing to you.”

  “Don’t land the Iridar in it,” Magnus said. “Go someplace upwind of the colony. We’ll hoof it to you.”

  Siobhan immediately saw three potential landing sites show up on the shared tactical. They were all in the same general direction, so Caden and Siobhan started moving in that direction.

  Magnus isn’t moving for the Iridar. He’s staying to find Telisa.

  She paused and traded looks with Caden.

  “I would be doing the same if you were missing,” he said aloud. Siobhan nodded. She loved that Caden knew exactly what her look had meant.

  They did not travel toward the Iridar at full speed. Beyond the old perimeter of the force towers, the dangers they had found in the other Celaran vine jungles lurked. Siobhan fell into the motions and forgot about the world beyond the thick vines and huge leaves as they traveled. They had made a kilometer of progress when the PIT channel became active again.

  “I found Telisa!” Magnus said. “She’s beat up. I think her host body is the only reason she’s alive.”

  “Bring her to the sick bay,” said Cilreth. “Should I send your carrier robot prototype?”

  “No, I’m here with some Space Force survivors,” Magnus said. “Still nothing from Jason, though.”

  And he’s not superhuman like Telisa.

  Siobhan and Caden quickened their pace; news of their leader’s survival had increased their motivation. It took another half hour before they approached the Iridar’s actual landing site.

  “Some of the Celarans have come to the Iridar!” Caden told her.

  Siobhan slowed and looked toward their spacecraft’s location from the tactical. She saw the slender flyers emerging from the jungle in large groups. Siobhan and Caden climbed clos
er to the Iridar.

  “Who’s that?” asked Caden.

  He referred to two men in UNSF uniforms who stood twenty meters from the Iridar. Siobhan and Caden glided in, startling the men.

  “Steady,” Caden said.

  “You’re survivors from the robotic unit?” Siobhan asked. Her link identified them as Lieutenants Grant and Timon.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Grant. “We’re robot handlers assigned to the Midway.”

  “Just you two? No others?”

  “Colonel Agrawal survived,” Grant said. “He’s just a bit behind us because he wanted to collect more data from the destroyed Storks. Due to the communications disruptions, we didn’t receive many death rattles.”

  “Death rattles?” Siobhan prompted.

  “When a Space Force robot dies it will often send information about what kind of destruction it experienced—if it can,” Caden told her. “Various subcomponents will all do this, so even if the robot’s brain dies near-instantly, the cause of its demise can often be pieced together.”

  I can tell you right now they all died from Destroyer high energy weapons.

  A pained look crossed Grant’s face. “Your man was with us. Saved our asses more than one time, but...”

  “He took a big hit from one of the Destroyers,” Timon said. “Nothing left of him except pieces of Momma Veer. He died a hero. He must have killed half a dozen of the smaller ones.”

  “I see,” Siobhan said. She thought of Jason for a moment. The news of his death did not feel real. Siobhan felt like Jason would show up at the ship’s mess as if nothing had happened.

  It’s because we’ve all died so many times in VR training.

  Her lack of a strong emotional reaction made her feel a different emotion: guilt.

  Magnus arrived, interrupting her internal processing of Jason’s death. He carried Telisa in his arms. The pair appeared from the jungle like some duo from an action VR. Siobhan reminded herself that despite Magnus’s stout musculature, Telisa was supposed to be the stronger of the two.

  She must be badly hurt.

  Caden and Siobhan hurried over to meet them in front of the Iridar.

  Magnus slowly let Telisa stand on her own. Siobhan moved in and hugged Telisa carefully.