by John Ringo
“This is a big camp. If this is a decoy, those are holograms… so an insertion team would come someplace like right here,” he said, jabbing his finger at the ground, “see all this and boogie in a hurry, without doing a detailed check. They’d see what the Blobs wanted them to see and not start a fight with a force that size. But why?”
“Because they want us to call in a report of a major facility building up and request space support,” Bell Toll extrapolated. “The Navy sends a major force in, and somewhere they’re waiting to cream it.”
“Tirdal, you say they might be able to block you?” Gun Doll asked.
“It’s possible, of course,” he admitted. “It’s never happened, but I can’t rule it out. They’d be just as likely, more so, to note your signatures. I can… suppress mine. Do as a matter of course. Humans, nonsensat humans, do not.”
“What are you thinking, Doll?” Shiva asked.
“If they tracked us coming in and want us to leave with that intel, we’re fine. If they haven’t pinged on us yet, we don’t want them to. We can’t assume those are holograms.”
“One way to find out,” Gorilla put in. “The biotic mole.”
“We didn’t bring it this far to not use it,” Bell Toll said reasonably. “Do it. But be careful.”
“Believe me, sir, seeing that dance down there makes me very careful,” Gorilla replied.
The item in question was a hamsterlike bio-animate. Grown from Earth rodents, it was a “dumb” biorobotic brain with tiny sensors encased in a real and retarded animal that had just enough brainpower to eat, excrete and move where told. It wasn’t good for any detailed scans, but it excelled at missions like this. Even if detected, it would look like one of the local minor mammals.
“Send it scurrying in, however it’s supposed to move, and have it contact something, preferably a dumb bot,” Bell Toll ordered. “We’ll go from there. Gun Doll.”
“Sir?”
“Get the transmitter ready. If we get doinked, the report has to go out before we die. But don’t push it without my orders.”
“Yes, sir,” she agreed. And if it came to that they were well and truly fucked, because the emergency transmitter would burn a signal through subspace that would be easily readable at the Navy’s station thirty-five light-years away. They might as well set off fireworks and wave their arms.
“Primary plan is to walk out with the data, no matter what it is,” Bell Toll reiterated. “I’d rather fly out than fight. So don’t get horny. This is a walk, not a dance.”
Gorilla was done digging in his ruck, and had the tiny creature in his hand. It sat there, dumb and still, its only sign of life being the little turd it chose to drop right then. Ignoring the minor distraction, Gorilla traced instructions on the touchpad in front of him, then set the creature atop the larger standard “pill bug” that would carry it to the perimeter. He gathered up the pair and shimmied higher toward the crest. There was no real reason, just the psychology of being a bit closer. Tirdal followed behind. The few meters would help him sense better. This was not a good situation. Behind him, Dagger came up with his sensors, and squirmed between two rocks like a lizard.
Gorilla put the bigger bot down and sent it on its way. He’d programmed it to pick a course and meander down as if feeding. He could adjust its path if need indicated, through the wire it was laying behind itself as it scurried under ledges and behind rocks, making good use of the terrain. At every pause it sent another image back.
“I hate to rush you, Gorilla,” Bell Toll said, “but it’s about three hours until dawn and we’ll need to be making trail soon.”
“Gotcha, sir. Let me get it into the trees and I can speed things up.”
And he did. Once the rock started giving way, he dialed the creature up to a fast trot, using what image there was to “drive” the bot through the woods. Its own circuits gave it a certain amount of decision making, and with his interpretation of the terrain ahead, it traveled quickly.
“Less than three thousand meters to go,” he reported. “Slowing back down.”
The device stopped a safe (they hoped) two hundred meters from the outer perimeter. The viewster biobot dropped off its back and darted for cover under thick grass. It too was programmed to move “naturally.” In this case, it snuffled forward until it found a small game trail and trotted along it toward the site. To any sort of sensor it would look like what it was, a furry little animal. There were no electronic systems on it, no evidence that it was a construct. It would be invisible unless the sensors were designed to search for nonautochthonous life forms.
In a spot of good news, it appeared they were not, because the little creature was able to penetrate without any of the sensors going off. Further in there would probably be “clean” zones into which even a mouse couldn’t penetrate. But the outer sections were relatively easy, with only local terrain, predators and the biobot’s diminutive size as obstacles.
It took another solid hour for the creature to do its penetration, just one of many small mammaloids running around in the area. Once it did, it found a rock under which were several of the local roach lookalikes. They were edible to earth creatures and the viewster hunted them avidly until another party of Blobs, or perhaps the same one, came back through. When it saw the low, grey creatures it quickly scuttled across their path where the swift moving creatures would run over it and continue on their way.
“Here we go,” Gorilla said, and everyone watched the repeated image from his controller. The “Tslek” flopped and rolled right over the sensor-creature, leaving it, and the nearby grass and twigs, unharmed. They were excellent holograms, but nothing more.
And the base was a trap.
The encounter had been in clear view of the sensors Dagger and Gorilla had deployed and that was that. Gorilla looked at Tirdal, who stared back but didn’t even change expression, then down at the team. Whatever was there was apparently a fake.
“I can send the viewster into a few emplacements and possibly get more information, sir, but the likelihood of detection increases with each exposure. And I think the answer we have is short and sweet.”
Bell Toll shook his head for a negative, then used hisses and hand signals to get the attention of the rest and order them back. The Aldenata tech-based communicators they had were absolutely secure, but he wasn’t going to trust them this close to an enemy base that was obviously set to trip them up. It might, in fact, be best to go back to old-fashioned laser signals, even if it limited them to a line-of-sight formation. After this, they had to exfiltrate by a different route to avoid possible detection, then get the acquired intel back to the sector command. The slim facts they had would nevertheless rule out many wrong avenues in this game of deception. Negatives could sometimes, in fact, prove more valuable than concrete answers.
But that was for the analysts to decide. Their job was to hump back out and stay alive.
Following Gorilla’s preprogrammed orders, the viewster headed back up the game trail as the two recon troops and Tirdal slid down the reverse slope of the ridge. The larger bot had already headed back over so Gorilla told it and its companion to head out on point. The reverse trip would actually be shorter than the insertion and they should be able to make it in a week. It would be a tense week of careful movement and thorough concealment. Whether or not the Tslek had planned for them to find the site, they had to assume that the Tslek knew they’d found the deception. So being found now would mean death. A pawn stays alive only so long as its purpose is served, and from a Tslek viewpoint they were now a liability even had they been valuable before.
The team bivouacked again within the trees, the nearness to the Blobs being a slightly better risk than trying to slog out fast, risking noise and discovery as they traversed terrain in daylight. They’d save the forced march for tomorrow night.
Later that day, the viewster came darting back over the shards of the ridge and found the place where it had been told to report. It sat patiently under a
ledge and waited an hour for signals or orders, but there was nothing there. Having lost contact with its control it snuffled around until it found a hole in the ground, crawled in and died. Specially bred internal bacteria would dissolve it in under three hours, leaving nothing but a smell and some bones. At some level, everything is expendable.
Chapter 9
TheIR RETURN route cut through the low hills that had intervened before. For a while they followed some game trails that paralleled the hills. The hills probably were ancient remnants of mountains, worn down from staggering ranges, most likely foothills of the taller mountains that rose to east and west of the glacial valley and river plain in between. There were other signs of old vulcanism, indicating that this area had had a violent youth.
Once away from the Tslek “installation,” they moved quickly and surely, and off the game trails. Predators loved game trails for obvious reasons, and no one wanted a fight. There was no other reason to be more than normally cautious, and every reason to get off-planet as soon as possible, so they slogged fast. Ferret made good time and showed considerable skill at finding routes with fair footing and clear space to hike, while still keeping tall growth around them for concealment. He rarely caused them to backtrack around obstacles, though he did have them detour around another log that might contain a nest of the biting ant things. Tirdal watched and tried to deduce how Ferret did this. It was a skill he had no experience in.
The second night out, they came to a fairly deep and strong stream that had cut a chasm through the rocks ahead.
“We’ll have to detour downstream until we find a place to ford,” Ferret said. “Unless we’re going to build a moly-rope bridge?”
“No,” Shiva said. “Safer and likely faster to go around. Five minutes to rest and on we go.”
The path downstream was a rubble and boulder-strewn igneous mass with trees growing at chaotic angles near the edge, straight and tall further back. The soil was rich and fragrant, made dark and fertile by minerals from the broken rocks and well-rotted foliage. It wasn’t a hard route for trained troops, as it was downhill with lots of handholds. They swiftly covered three kilometers of steep, rocky bank as the bots led the way.
“Flat ground ahead,” Gorilla advised.
Ten minutes later, the ground began to level. They were back out onto glacial plain. No sooner had they reached a stretch that looked promising for a crossing, Gorilla called, “Whoa! Anomaly!” His voice was soft but urgent.
“What type?” Bell Toll asked as Shiva waved the troops into a perimeter.
“Not here,” Gorilla answered with a shake of his head. “Forward and west. Energy reading of some kind. It’s small and not moving.”
“Isn’t that just great?” Bell Toll asked facetiously. “Okay, keep the bots safely back but find out what you can. Everyone sit tight here. Tirdal, what’ve you got for me? Can you sense it?”
“Yes, I can now,” he nodded. “It’s very faint. It’s not Tslek. There’s something there, but it doesn’t even seem alive. Just… there, present. And it has a psychic component. More than that I cannot say. But definitely not alive.”
“Okay, Ferret will lead, you move up closer to him and keep alert. Remember that he has more experience at sneaking. Gorilla, get your bots out wide and move slowly; we don’t want to spook whatever it is, but we’ve got to take a look ourselves. Shiva, plot us two escape routes — one slow and cautious, one go-to-hell. Everyone ping me acknowledgment… okay, let’s do it.”
Tirdal and Ferret dropped their rucks and crept forward. The relayed image from Gorilla’s bots helped them keep to low ground and clear of the knotted webs of roots. The ground was soft and mushy again, and it soaked through their suits, the wetness permeating the air with the smell of damp and rotting life. The only animals they saw were the smallest scavengers and stem-eating types. While crawling, they were below the umbrellalike canopies of bushes. Their route through the looping roots of the trees took them past a local anthill analog, busily trafficked by beetle-creatures less than a centimeter long. Ferret shook off a few that tried to bite and sting, taking him for some dead source of protein.
“Ouch,” he muttered. “Gonna have welts from that. They aren’t as bad as those other little bastards, but watch them, Tirdal.”
“I see them,” Tirdal said. “Stand by.” He pulled a scrap of uneaten ration from his smaller ruck and waved it past the nest, then dropped it a meter away. It was a sugary cookie and the eager little monsters swarmed it and ignored him.
“Let’s see the bots-eye view,” Ferret asked. Gorilla obliged and relayed a near-ground-level image in the visible spectrum. There was an almost-clearing ahead; one of those spots where the trees thinned enough for a dropship insertion or a small camp. The bots had stopped there. They’d been programmed to pause if they encountered anything with a pattern not on file as “natural,” and what was here certainly wasn’t.
“Is that what we’re looking at?” Ferret asked.
“At and for,” Gorilla replied. “I dunno what it is.”
All that could be seen was a thin spot in the trees. Within were some lumps and mounds. They resembled burial cairns from some lost civilization, weathered and beaten for ages. There was a wrongness to the area that even the humans could feel.
“The source is in there somewhere,” Gorilla said. “No threats show. I’ve got both bots watching it and the flyers perched on trees on the far side. Nothing except local life.”
“Gorilla,” Bell Toll said, “send a bot in slowly. One step at a time. Ferret and Tirdal can pull up to the edge. We’ll stay back for support. Thor and Shiva, keep an eye on our asses.” There were pings of acknowledgment and the team moved.
They’d shifted perhaps five meters when Gorilla said, “Stop.” Everyone froze, fingers on triggers, until he said, “No threat, but I’ve IDed the source. Central mound, right there. Power emanations, but very low.”
“Okay,” Bell Toll acknowledged. “Let’s move in. Ferret and Tirdal wait where you are. Gun Doll and I will take a supporting position on the left. Dagger and Shiva on the right. Gorilla will pull up and relieve Ferret, then Ferret advances.”
Upon closer inspection, the area wasn’t a clearing at all. It was tree covered, like the surrounding terrain, but in a radius around the central mound the trees were slightly stunted and there were stones poking up through the loam. It was the lack of animals and the stunted trees that gave it an odd feel.
“Radiation?” asked Bell Toll.
“Not much above background levels,” Gorilla said after studying his sensors.
“There’s a minor pulse to the emitted frequency,” Dagger added. “It’s steady. Nothing dangerous to us, but I suppose after enough years it builds up. There also might be chemicals in the soil, depending on what this device is. The surface here reads differently. And those stones are odd.”
They were among the mounds, now. Ferret and Thor had their backs in, as did Gun Doll, her automatic cannon moving in slow sweeps as she studied the trees.
Tirdal brushed at one of the stones and examined the striations revealed beneath the clinging dirt. It was an extruded block, not carved native stone.
“Plascrete,” he said softly.
The others shifted carefully over to him.
“What did you say?” Bell Toll asked.
“Plascrete,” he repeated. “Look at the extrusion marks and the texture. It was produced on site with no concern for prettiness.”
Gun Doll ran her fingers over the chipped corners of the revealed mass.
“How old does plascrete have to be to crack and crumble like that?”
“Very old, I would guess… and Sense,” Tirdal said.
Spreading out and examining other revealed rocks determined that the place was a ruin. It was some sort of very old building or fortification, hundreds, possibly thousands of years old. All that was left were a few mounds of tumbled plascrete overgrown with misshapen, gene-damaged trees and tangled vines. In the cold
drizzle and half-light, it was an eerie, disturbing scene.
Gorilla had the bot dig into the lump, carefully. It made quiet incursions by drill, split cracks between the holes with a pneumatic ram and gingerly pulled out sections. It then made another cut, slightly deeper. Ferret, Dagger and Shiva stayed in an outer perimeter, nerves naked wires, alert for any threatening movement, or any movement at all. The other half of the troop formed to contain anything that might erupt from within the dig.
“Energy source,” Tirdal said.
“Yes?” prompted Bell Toll.
“I’m not sure. Just some source of energy. They all feel somewhat alike… heat, radio, UV… just a sense of intruding rays, not enough to be harmful.”
“Got that, Gorilla?” Bell Toll asked.
“Got it,” he nodded softly, adjusting the bot to dig wider before going deeper. “We’re going to have to either hide these blocks the bot is cutting, or stick them back when done. A pile will be a giveaway.”
“Yes,” Bell Toll agreed. “But it can’t be much deeper now, can it?”
In answer, Tirdal said, “There.”
“Yeah, the bot sees it now,” Gorilla agreed, looking at his screen. “I’m clearing around it. It’s a root power source of some kind, encased in plasteel.”
Bell Toll dialed up enhancement and resolution on his helmet and tried to get a glimpse into the hole, past the ludicrously hulking limbs of the small bot.
“Oh, shit,” he said softly.
“What?” asked Gun Doll, being closest. She pulled up her own screen and said, “ ‘Oh, shit’ is right.”
Enough of the case was revealed for its architecture to become apparent. That combined with the energy readings made it familiar to anyone who studied history or matters military.
It was an Aldenata artifact. Apparently a functional one.
The Aldenata were extinct. It had been they who had bred the Posleen for war, and screwed it up so as to leave the Posleen a marauding threat. They’d created the Darhel, who could administrate but not fight to defend themselves. The Indowy, Tchpth and possibly the humans had been tampered with by them, also. Besides the damaged races of this part of the galaxy, they’d left a few installations and a very few artifacts. Whatever had done them in had been thorough. No one knew. Or at least, no humans. The other races didn’t discuss it much.
