***
“Hi. What have you guys found out?” Cilreth asked. She addressed both Telisa and Jason. The channel gained more people as Telisa hooked them in.
Makes sense. She doesn’t want to explain this to everyone separately, Cilreth thought.
“It’s basically a laser. An amazing laser, though,” Telisa reported.
“Weapon?” Caden asked.
“It could be. Here’s the thing, it’s much more flexible than our lasers in so many ways.”
“Fits with the Celaran theme so far.”
Telisa added her vision to the channel feed and held the laser in front of her.
“This aperture can create a focus point only millimeters away. It could be used as a medical scalpel. But it will also adjust like so. Now you have a cutting laser. Or even a welder. The frequencies are amazingly versatile. I can use this in infrared as a campfire. Or heat a rock to warm us instead. And we can focus it to become a weapon like our own lasers.”
“Okay, so these guys are more advanced than us,” Imanol said. “We kind of already suspected that.”
“It’s a conceptual difference beyond that, I think,” Cilreth said. “We might be able to make something like this. It would be larger, but we could do it. But we don’t. Our tools are specialized. This is not. And it goes beyond what I’ve talked about so far. The energy cell for instance.”
“Does the cell have burst chambers?” asked Imanol.
“What’s that?” injected Jason.
“Our laser cells have a generic base, which lets the cells be used universally in a pinch,” Cilreth said. “Such as for your flashlight under your laser there. But in order to make it efficient and effective for the laser, some amount of the cell is designed with burst chambers, one for each shot. Military designs can be eighty percent burst chambers or even a hundred percent.”
“And this one?”
“No such design. The power cell has to be, you guessed it, completely versatile. Like you said before, the Celarans are making different trade offs. This device is great for a frontier site, it can be used for so many different things. But as a combat laser, it’s not as good as we could make. Terrans would have ten different tools for this.”
“So we’ve confirmed this about them,” Jason said. “They’re generalists, at least when it comes to their gadgets.”
Telisa nodded. “That’s exactly how it pans out. The robots at the tower were the same way. They were amazingly flexible, over five configurations at least. I think we’ll find even more artifacts with the same properties.”
“How did talking with the alien go?” Jason asked.
“Siobhan got a ways with sign language and simple link signals. The drawings didn’t get anywhere. Total lack of engagement with drawings. Seems like the Blackvine would be able to see them but maybe its vision doesn’t work that way. Anyway, it can understand things like, ‘we want you to have this’ or, ‘follow me’. Beyond a few hand signals like that, they haven’t gotten far.”
Chapter 11
Things felt quiet. Imanol checked the ship’s status and confirmed what he suspected: they had landed near the third ruins site. The whole team was impatient for answers. Imanol admitted to himself he was intrigued as well. He now felt just as motivated as the others to figure out the Celarans.
Imanol had been reviewing the feeds from the site that had accumulated since they came to Idrick Piper V. He watched the few glimpses of Celaran robots their attendant spies had seen at the third ruins site.
The first machine was a flyer. Telisa had matched it to a configuration of the flying machine they had found at the tower in the first site. The feed showed the machine circling the perimeter of the flat area around the buildings. Imanol’s gut feeling was that it was nothing more than a scout.
Imanol flipped to the next sighting. The next machine they had spotted was much larger, the size of a military vehicle. It usually moved around on four low profile treads, though at one point it simply flew over a fence. It used a powerful laser to cut away the encroaching vines around the compound, then scooped them up and moved them inside.
That’s a lot of material. What is it being moved in there for? Food?
The last machine their spy attendants had spotted was smaller and circular, perhaps a meter in diameter. Its upper surface was slightly convex, rising to a flat turret on the top. Sensors hung from the lip of the device around the perimeter. It looked like an armored frisbee, and the footage showed it flying like one around the base. The video ended when the robot swerved to intercept the attendant that sent the feed. That attendant had been destroyed.
That’s a security machine. It has to be. It’s like a hover tank, except it truly flies.
Imanol weighed the gravity of the response. Did the destruction of the attendant mean the Celarans were hostile? Or just security conscious and diligent? He decided to leave the jury out on that one. Just in case, he loaded target signatures for each of the robots into his weapons and sent the team a pointer advising them to do the same.
As Imanol left his tiny room with his equipment, he arranged his PV to feature the maps of the compound they had targeted.
The entire area was kilometers on a side, the size of a small city. The buildings were more uniform than the houses, with sharper edges and more regular square shapes. Imanol presumed that was because those shapes had more volume for the surface area than a crazy hodgepodge of angles like the houses had. The entire compound sat upon a flat gray surface. It was probably something hard like concrete or a ceramic. A net fence surrounded the compound. The fence looked metal and connected 36 towers placed about every 200 meters.
The towers bore what looked like weapons. They were large dish-shaped projectors mounted so they could swivel and face any direction. So far, no serious weapon capability had been displayed. The dishes would occasionally swivel toward an airborne creature, causing it to swerve away. An attendant had tested the towers to determine the nature of the deterrent. As far as Cilreth could determine from the data, the tower somehow caused a force to act on a flyer and literally push it away. Whether that force was electromagnetic or gravitic or otherwise, she could not say.
An analysis from orbit had concluded the surfaces of the compound buildings and the gray surface surrounding them absorbed sunlight very well. The PIT team all agreed that was probably a secondary source of power. Any Terran industrial or military complex would need more power than could be captured from that cross section of sunlight, even at high efficiency.
No doubt about it. There will be tech here we can claim. But with those machines around, we may have to fight for it. And if there are any Celarans left here, it seems like they would be here.
The others assembled in the main bay around the same time as Imanol. He did not see the Vovokan battle sphere and assumed it had already moved outside.
“Is the sphere going to fry the jungle again?” Imanol asked.
“I doubt it,” Telisa said. “We landed far enough from the compound, just in case.”
Imanol took a look through the exterior feeds. They had landed the ship directly upon the vine forest this time. The ship had settled through many of them, finally resting near the surface.
The floor shifted slightly underfoot.
“The battle sphere is cutting things from underneath the New Iridar. I guess it wants us on the ground,” Caden said.
“Should be relatively easy,” Cilreth said. “We landed pretty far from any of those superclusters like Imanol and Jason found.”
The team stood by. Once the ship had settled upon scorched ground, the Vovokan battle sphere moved out to patrol. Then they dropped the ramp and descended.
The air smelled smoky, but Imanol could see the forest around them had gone mostly unharmed. A trail of black smoke drifted away above.
“The smoke announces our presence,” Imanol said.
“The Celarans or their machines are sophisticated enough to detect us at this distance anyway,” Telisa sai
d.
And what about anything less sophisticated but more hungry?
Vincent scuttled out of the bay after them. It moved upon several dark, leafy stalks that looked just like its arms to Imanol.
“It’s coming with us?” Imanol asked slowly.
“Vincent’s not our prisoner,” Telisa said.
“Okay. Creepy.”
I hope Telisa’s not ready to make the same old mistakes again. Trusting aliens hasn’t worked out well for us.
As if reading his mind, Telisa spoke up again.
“I know we can’t trust Vincent. I also know, we stand to learn a lot from him. He’s not Shiny. If we can communicate, chances are Vincent knows a thing or two about the Celarans.”
“Which would be a thing or two more than we know,” Siobhan said glumly.
“Oh we have some ideas,” Jason said.
Imanol looked at Jason. His partner seemed to be taking the accompanying alien plant well. As for himself... Imanol had added Old Leafy to his weapon target sigs long ago.
Wait till the damn plant tries to eat him like that other thing. Then he’ll get a healthy sense of paranoia and cynicism.
Jason caught his look. “I’m okay. It was some kind of wild animal that attacked us, I think. Your jaguar. Vincent here is an intelligent creature.”
“Which makes him more dangerous, not less,” grumbled Imanol.
He sounded like the old Telisa. Too trusting.
Jason did not reply. Imanol decided he had caused enough trouble and focused on the task at hand. He looked at his link map and oriented himself relative to the complex.
Telisa took the lead again. She walked over to the edge of the undergrowth and brought her arm back to start hacking, but Siobhan interrupted her.
“Let’s just climb instead. We can get a view from above, and avoid any more holes in the ground.”
“Is that what the rest of you want to do?”
“Yes,” Caden said.
Well, of course.
“I’m not such a good climber, but I could use the practice I guess,” Cilreth said. She sounded a lot less enthused about the idea, like Imanol himself.
“Yes, fine, we’ll play up there with the young’uns,” he said grumpily.
The team took to the vines like a bunch of kids. Caden and Siobhan, at least, were just kids as far as Imanol thought. They climbed up and started along a huge vine heading in roughly the right direction. He saw Jason take a smart rope out of his pack and hand it to Vincent. The Blackvine reached out and took the cluster of black rope.
“Does it know about our link interfaces?” Imanol asked.
“Vincent? He’s been playing with them, but hasn’t figured them out yet,” Cilreth said.
“Don’t give him too many permissions!” Imanol blurted.
“Of course not,” Cilreth said on a private channel. “Us veterans will keep these kids in line.”
Imanol nodded.
“I gave him permission for the smart rope,” Jason said.
“Okay,” Telisa said. “Just that for now.”
Vincent’s smart rope jumped and coiled at random. Telisa took her rope out and prepared to demonstrate. She paused.
“Hrm. The link protocols aren’t set up to send messages in the open. Vincent sees only encrypted signals. And I can’t add him to the channel to let him see the conversation with the rope unobscured.”
“It would be too dangerous to let him clone your link,” Siobhan said. “Besides the commands all have a time-component to the authentication. He can’t just copy your same commands a second later and get it to work.”
“I’ll fix it,” Cilreth said.
“How?” Telisa and Siobhan asked simultaneously.
“I’ll give him a link. I can set it up as a repeater. He can transmit commands to his link and it will establish his secure connections. We’ll authorize him to do a few things here and there.”
“You have spare links lying around?” asked Imanol. He knew it was illegal to have links other than your own unless you were an authorized entity that installed them in people. Of course, he had seen it on the frontier before—and they were now way beyond that.
“I picked up some, yes,” she said. “If you recall, things were kind of busy last time we made it home. That opened some opportunities. Given we’re on the outs with the... well, we were working against the previous government, and now, maybe the new one, too.”
Wow. Connected.
Imanol checked Telisa’s face. He gauged that she already knew about the links.
“I wish we had thought about this earlier,” Caden said.
“Give me fifteen minutes,” Cilreth said, running back inside.
“Bring some camping gear. We probably won’t be able to just walk in and sleepover this time,” Telisa said.
“What’s the plan, exactly?” Imanol asked.
“We’ll take a look around. Our scouts have never been bothered off the flat area that surrounds the buildings. There’s a fence of sorts, beyond that, our machines have been attacked. So we’ll set up a temporary camp just outside the fence. Then, Siobhan and I will go in cloaked and see what we can find out.”
Imanol walked back in to fill another pack since he had to wait anyway. Knowing they would have a temporary camp opened up new possibilities. He could take some extra food, water, and equipment, knowing he would not have to carry the whole thing far.
I’ll pack like Maxsym, he thought. Imanol realized he actually felt sorry for the once-PIT member. He had died on the Clacker when Shiny backstabbed them. Poor guy had never had a chance.
Who else has PIT lost? Quite a few. Arakaki. Magnus, sort of. And the original guys, Jack and... Thomas? There were more. Telisa doesn’t talk about it much. Kinda puts a damper on recruiting I bet.
Once Imanol had his pack and returned, Cilreth was outside and working with a link. Everyone tried not to watch her, even though they were all waiting. Finally Cilreth handed the small device to Vincent. The Blackvine accepted it.
“The rope is the only service he has available to start,” she said.
The rope started to move. It performed some random maneuvers, this time with clear purpose and nothing like the spastic twitching from before.
“Let’s move out. Vincent can stay here and play all it wants,” Imanol said.
Telisa shrugged. She leaped straight up, caught a big vine above and swung up onto it. Everyone else started to follow more slowly. No one else on the team could match her feat of strength. Once on her perch, Telisa moved slowly forward, scanning for danger while everyone else made it to the huge branch of the vine. Vincent followed along last. It had stowed the smart rope among its dark tendrils.
Nothing threatened them as they climbed away from New Iridar toward the third site. Telisa kept the attendant spheres from wandering onto the flat surfaces ahead so they would not get lost like the others. She picked a big vine that approached their goal and followed it up to the top of one of the huge artificial spires that rose from the ground.
Telisa stopped to take a look. Caden arrived next, then Imanol. The vine wrapped around the spire, providing a solid ledge with a great view of the compound. Imanol paused with the others to look out over the alien buildings.
Their gray surfaces looked clear. There were not many windows. To Imanol, the large buildings looked a lot like spacecraft hangars.
If we got a Celaran space ship, that would please Shiny. Maybe Telisa could get on his good side and snag Magnus back. Then we could go back out on a mission and just run like hell.
“This is our new camp,” Telisa announced. “At the base of this spire.”
“Should we camouflage it?” Caden asked.
“If you want to design it with that in mind, fine, but don’t work too hard. At their technology level, I imagine those machines would spot us anyway, if they’re searching for a threat.”
“Okay,” Caden said. He took out a smart rope and told it to head down. Imanol joined Caden. He was
eager to get rid of the extra weight he had been carrying.
As Caden and Imanol cleared the ground around the trunk of the spire, the conversation continued up on the overlook. The two at ground level listened in on the group channel.
“So what’s the plan?” Siobhan asked. “We go in first? What if they shoot?”
“We can’t risk just walking in. They took steps to keep our robots out. You and I will go in stealthed.”
“I’m ready.” Imanol could hear the excitement in Siobhan’s voice.
She’s looking for another danger high and Telisa’s dropping one right on her lap.
Imanol caught a worried look cross Caden’s face.
So he does have enough sense to know she might not come back.
Imanol thought about Caden and Siobhan. He knew it was tragic. Siobhan would get killed sooner or later, or Caden would, then the survivor would take another big step in the transformation from young and carefree into a mature cynic like Telisa or Imanol.
It would almost be luckier if they both die together. More romantic, too, he thought.
“Talk to Fast and Frightening,” Imanol found himself saying to Caden. “Tell her it’s not a game. Tell her to grow up so you two can make it to thirty together.” For once his voice was flat and sincere.
Caden sensed that Imanol was not giving him a hard time. He nodded.
Chapter 12
“We’ll cut through the fence here,” Telisa said to Siobhan. They crouched beside the base of a large vine near the edge of the Celaran compound. Three huge leaves drooped down over them, forming a concealed niche from which they would deploy.
Telisa used their shared link map to mark a section of the fence between two Celaran towers directly before them.
“I want to move in quickly, because I think one of those big machines that clears the forest will come out to repair it. I’m guessing these machines are as multi role as the Celaran tools.”
Siobhan nodded. She looked pensive. Something had changed in her attitude.
Parker Interstellar Travels 6: The Celaran Ruins Page 12
