The Celaran Solution (Parker Interstellar Travels Book 9)

by Michael McCloskey

  They took the hint and shut up.

  “Keep working the data,” Telisa said. “Also, use four or more of the ship’s probes to keep patrolling the rest of the system for a Celaran or Destroyer presence. The handful of attendants I have out there aren’t really enough. I want more details before we choose our destinations.”

  “Launching the probes...”

  Marcant gave the probes a complex spiral course through the system, looping around the other four planets to save energy and discover anything hiding away. Then he went back to the sensor feeds of the planet below.

  This is going to be a grim mission.

  Chapter 3

  The nearby ruins dominated the horizon before Caden. They could be seen from within the sickly red jungle because the vines climbed to less than half the height of the support spikes. Most of the biomass here had dried and fallen, congealing into a flaky brown mush. Small red insects that reminded him of maggots writhed in colonies every few meters.

  Siobhan and Lee were nothing but two abstract avatars moving along beside him. Siobhan’s echoform image was a ghostly blue humanoid while Lee’s writhed like a snake swimming through the air. With the three-man squad using the cloaking devices, the echoforms were all they could see of each other. Caden was used to it by now since they had been training this way on the Iridar for a week.

  Caden watched Lee’s echoform glide along the broken ground. The Celaran had talked Telisa into letting her join the initial recon team. Lee moved slowly, which Caden had learned was a sign of sadness.

  “Many of these spikes are dead,” Lee said. Caden recalled that here on their planet of origin, the soaring support spikes were natural growths, unlike their artificial equivalents on the colony worlds.

  That explains why some of these spikes are pale like bone and others have the greenish tint. I assume the greenish ones are still alive.

  “These red bugs are native, right?” Siobhan asked.

  “Yes,” Lee said. “They are scavengers. Ground things.”

  The translator indicated her last statement was in light disgust.

  Ground things. Ha.

  “Lee, take a quick fly-through and let me know if you see any of the survivors,” Telisa ordered from the Iridar. “Make no contact. Stay hidden.”

  The team’s three extra-envelope attendants routed Telisa’s communications to them. Lee and Cynan had shown the Terrans all the ins and outs of staying in touch even while the cloaking spheres were active. They had been taught that, though communication was possible, and still quite stealthy by Terran standards, it might give them away to advanced observers.

  Caden and Siobhan picked their way toward the dull gray and green hulks of dead buildings in the distance. The orbital survey had told them about a hundred Celarans lived in this area. Caden hooked into a feed from a scout attendant. No life other than the bugs was visible from its vantage point. He could not make out any signs of recent repairs in the ruins.

  The buildings were made in the same crazy style of the ones Caden had seen on the colony worlds and the space habitat. Few of their circular windows had survived the destruction. Unlike heavily damaged Terran buildings that revealed the crisscross pattern of sundered floors and rooms, the Celaran building shells exposed hollow interiors lined with small niches along the walls and floor serving as individual ‘rooms’. For the first time, Caden understood why the Celaran buildings were so chaotic: the highly varied outer surface features gave the internal niches different shapes and sizes to match them to various usages.

  Caden looked back the way they had come and saw the line of their footsteps imprinted in the brown mush, visible just outside their cloaking envelopes.

  “We’re leaving a trail,” Caden pointed out. “Let’s try to stay close to the lowest vines to cover it.”

  “Good idea,” Siobhan said. “Oh, look.”

  Caden figured she referred to Lee’s video feed. Lee had come across a wide swath of devastation that cut through the cluster of destroyed buildings. He recognized the cause immediately.

  The main weapons of a Colossal ripped right through the center.

  Caden and Siobhan stood a half kilometer from the nearest building. It was an outlier; it looked about two Terran stories tall. Its complex roof was brown, indicating it had been under the vine canopy before the disaster and now sat covered in the mush.

  I wish I had my sniper rifle, Caden thought. Its powerful long-range sensors might be useful in spotting something.

  He settled for sending his third attendant to circle the building ahead.

  “There’s one!” Siobhan said.

  Caden quickly located the feed she spoke of before she sent out a pointer. A Celaran flashed brightly inside the wreck of a building missing an entire side. Siobhan’s scout attendant had spotted it.

  The Celaran’s signal quickly brought two other Celarans to it. They hovered over a ruined machine.

  “What are they doing?” Caden wondered.

  “Scavenging power stores,” Lee answered quickly. “They’ve probably come here to find useful items to bring back to wherever they live now.”

  Caden saw from the tactical and video feeds that Lee had circled back toward the Celarans they had spotted. He stopped with Siobhan over 100 meters away from the Celarans. They could watch the aliens through the video feeds of the forward attendants, so there was no reason to get any closer.

  One of the Celarans dropped onto the machine and held onto it with the fingers on one end of its body, while it used a tool rod held in its other fingers to detach an outer plate. Then another Celaran dropped down and helped the first pry pieces out of the machine.

  They probably have no factories working around here, Caden thought. Now they’re reduced to looting the ruins and taking anything useful.

  “Magnus says get samples, please,” Telisa said. She had been the only one talking to the ground team because she wanted to minimize radio traffic to avoid detection.

  “Should we use an attendant?” Caden asked.

  “No. Magnus whipped up a couple of collection bots,” Siobhan said. “It was a last-minute thing.”

  Caden could not see Siobhan, but he assumed she was retrieving machines from her pack. He supposed the things must be small so to avoid alarming a Celaran.

  But won’t they find those bots’ behavior unusual?

  He decided to hold the criticism until he saw the bots.

  “There,” Siobhan said. “There they go.”

  “Where?”

  “Those bugs,” Siobhan said.

  Caden looked around. He saw two insects flying away through the vines toward the Celarans they had seen.

  “Ah, disguised well. Native bugs too, I presume?”

  “Yes, I think Lee helped with them.”

  “Why don’t we simply ask them for samples? We could trade some of our equipment for it,” Caden suggested.

  “No direct contact yet,” Telisa repeated.

  “Shouldn’t we render aid?” asked Siobhan.

  “We’re going to help them. All of them. By keeping the team safe and making contact with factions we can ally with to defeat the Destroyers. Handing out what few trinkets we have to random survivors won’t change the big picture.”

  “Wow. Telisa sounds... harder now,” Siobhan said to Caden privately.

  “Still, the plan sounds noble enough,” Caden said to her. “What are the samples for?” he asked Telisa.

  “Lee said we could tell a lot about their health by analyzing tiny flakes of their skin.”

  Their robotic collectors flew up the Celarans as they worked. The aliens did not notice anything amiss as the duo of artificial insects buzzed straight toward the group. The bots simultaneously collided with their targets, bouncing right off the aliens’ exposed integument. The two Celarans that had been struck abandoned their work and flitted about the room in obvious distress.

  “I hope they’re just scared,” Caden said.

  “They’re startled,�
� Lee said. “Not hurt. The tiny machines are flying back now.”

  The Celarans calmed. They flashed at each other for another second, then they worked together to carry a flat hexagonal plate up into the air. They headed for an exit.

  “We spooked them,” Caden said.

  “Follow them to their home,” Telisa said. “I want to know where and how they live. Then get back to the shuttle.”

  Reconnaissance only.

  Caden knew that was the mission, but he had hoped that somehow they would make contact, anyway. The Celarans did not look starved, though he reminded himself he probably had no idea what a starving Celaran looked like; would they shrivel up and move slowly?

  “Even though the vines are very sickly, they must be able to find enough food?” Caden asked Lee.

  “Most have died, and these will refuse to have children until the situation has improved,” Lee said. “Though they suffer, I don’t think they’re in imminent danger.”

  “As long as the Destroyers don’t come back,” Siobhan added grimly.

  “Their work under the light of the star is done,” Lee said.

  The Celarans flew faster than Caden and Siobhan could move, but the attendants and Lee followed easily. Their destination was over two kilometers away, where they entered the husk of a building missing most of one side. A patch of healthy green vines had been braided across the hole in the side of the building to form a makeshift wall. The Celarans flew toward the wall and slipped straight through, using gaps Caden could not see.

  “Wow. I think they used a couple leaves as a kind of door,” Siobhan said.

  Caden nodded. “That’s likely their hideout. It must have taken a lot of work to weave that wall.”

  “A vine is a joy to work,” Lee said. “A day at most. The real work here is that those vines are green and healthy. Perhaps they made a filtration system to protect their vine.”

  “Should we send an attendant in?” Caden asked.

  “No,” Telisa said.

  “They may have to keep moving,” Lee said. “As the vines dry, a feeder moves on. They would not dare drain them too far, or the vines would die. If there are more than those three inside, they would have to be nomadic.”

  “What now?” asked Siobhan.

  “Drop your sap containers for them and come back to the shuttle,” Telisa ordered. “Then proceed to location two.”

  Caden located the shuttle on the tactical and let his link plan a route back. Siobhan took out a pair of transparent sap bags and placed them atop a ruined vine. Lee flew over and attached a tiny balloon with a fingertip-sized light beacon to one of the bags. The balloon inflated with a light gas, pulling the beacon upward.

  “I’ll set the beacon to start flashing in fifteen minutes. That should give us time,” Lee said.

  Caden had been told that the beacon flashed a message in Celaran that said more help was on the way. The PIT team was not on a mission of mercy, but if they determined that the Destroyer threat was gone, he assumed Telisa would have the other Celarans and the Space Force come to evacuate the survivors.

  “Destroyer!” warned Lee.

  Caden and Siobhan both abruptly knelt down behind a ruined vine branch. At the same time, Caden got a report that Lee’s forward attendant had died. He found a video feed that showed a glowing ovoid. The breeze picked up.

  “Is it a tank or a drone?” asked Siobhan.

  Caden understood her confusion. The machine glowed, but it was darker and quieter than Destroyers they had seen, and it was about twice the size of a drone. They remained under cover.

  The Destroyers know about Celaran stealth tech.

  As Caden prepared to use his laser, he realized the other half of his predicament.

  I need a projectile weapon.

  The Destroyers knew energy weapons well and had defenses against them. Since their creators were aquatic, they made less use of projectile weapons. Caden decided to use his breaker claw instead.

  “Disengage!” Telisa ordered.

  “It’s only one Destroyer,” Caden said. “We have to save those Celarans!”

  Telisa did not reply, probably to avoid any more traffic that might reveal his location to the Destroyer.

  “Only one?” asked Siobhan. Her tone told him she found his assertion overly optimistic.

  Caden watched the tactical map in his PV. Lee flew away from the Destroyer, either in fear or obedience to Telisa’s command. The attendants were also withdrawing.

  “Maybe if I shot the building it would scare the Celarans away,” Caden sent to Siobhan privately. Since she had covered only meters from him, he figured the communication would not be noticed.

  “Shoot the Destroyer,” she said. He smiled.

  She’s with me on this.

  “You use your claw, I’ll try my laser,” she said.

  “No! You’ll give yourself away.”

  Siobhan’s forward attendant went off the tactical. A second later, the vine before them flashed into flames. They dove away.

  “It can already sense us!” she said.

  Good point.

  Caden sent her a nonverbal acknowledgment along with the signal for “open fire”.

  His lead attendant hid under a stunted vine leaf the size of a dinner plate. It spotted the Destroyer and routed its location onto the tactical. It was only sixty meters out, coming around the building where the Celarans had been working.

  So close already! Good. Within breaker range.

  Light flashed across the sickly vine field. Caden’s stealth suit indicated it had protected his vision from a dangerous energy spike. He told his claw to activate on the enemy target.

  Booom!

  “Got it!” he transmitted, then debris started to rain down.

  If those Celarans are still around, that’ll get them to flee in short order.

  He looked over and saw that Siobhan’s echoform had a flashing red arm in his vision overlay.

  “Siobhan!”

  “I’m okay,” came a distressed reply. It sounded very much not okay.

  “You’re hit! Can you get your medikit? I’ll cover you.”

  There were no enemies on the tactical. Caden inched over in case Siobhan had been disabled and needed help getting the kit in action. At the same time, he told one of the attendants in his stealth envelope to go and join his forward one to watch for other Destroyers.

  “I can do it,” Siobhan said.

  “How bad?” asked Caden.

  “Those Celarans are long gone, you hear me? Get out of there,” Telisa ordered. She sounded angry, but Caden remained focused on Siobhan and did not process it.

  “My hand is gone,” she said. “I think my laser gave away my position.”

  Her hand! Gone!

  “It burned the vine right in front of us before we attacked!” Caden protested.

  “Yes, but it missed. I don’t think it knew exactly where we were.” Siobhan was already moving again, though slowly. Caden delayed a few seconds, watching the tactical, then he retreated after her. They had three kilometers to run to the ship, so he had plenty of time to worry about Siobhan’s arm and meeting Telisa when they got back.

  Lee doubled back to fly closer to them. Caden forced himself to pay as much attention to the video feeds in his PV as his injured friend. If another enemy appeared, he would have to react quickly to protect her.

  Caden had rotated through all the views and returned to the tactical when he noticed Siobhan had stopped. He turned to view her silhouette through the cloaking system. She had fallen.

  “Siobhan!”

  “I’m... coming...”

  No, you’re not.

  Caden turned and walked up to the edge of her stealth envelope. He had never done that before, even in virtual training.

  “Uhm, Lee? Siobhan needs help. Is there any reason I can’t go in there and carry her? Does one of us need to deactivate our cloaking or anything like that?”

  “The vines can twist and tangle. There is no ha
rm,” Lee said. “I’ll watch the underleaves.”

  Caden walked over to Siobhan. She had collapsed near one of the colonies of red grubs. Caden suppressed an urge to deactivate their stealthing and make sure none of the insects had gotten onto her.

  Just hurry.

  Caden told his suit to release a strength enhancer into his bloodstream and scooped Siobhan up into his arms. Between the drugs, the weak local gravity, and her light frame, it felt like he carried a hollow mannequin.

  Low gravity girl, he thought. I can do this.

  Caden started to run. He selected a weaving course through the low vines. The attendants left alive behind him had not detected any more dangers. Slowly, the load he carried started to feel heavier. Caden found himself breathing hard.

  “Are you there?” Caden asked Siobhan.

  “Yes. Are we going to make it?”

  “Definitely.”

  Telisa met him halfway. She took Siobhan without a word and bounded away. Caden heaved and puffed in his suit. The cooling had kicked in, but his muscles ached even in the low gravity.

  Before Siobhan left his link range, he asked her suit for the damage assessment. The report he received indicated that the trauma was limited to one arm. The suit had stabilized her.

  She’ll be okay, he told himself. This time.

  Chapter 4

  Siobhan lay on a medical web in the top-of-the-line medical bay of their new Iridar. She tried to hide the discomfort of having an artificial left hand attached to her recently destroyed lower arm. The automated medical machines had quickly removed the burned flesh, fabricated a hand and wrist, and attached it to her body. The hand twitched as it trained to understand her motor signals.

  Telisa stood by the webbing. She had not said much; Siobhan knew Telisa was displeased with their decision to fight. Caden had been denied entry into the med bay and told to prepare to back up Lee and Cynan on the second half of the scouting mission.

  “I might be of use—” Siobhan started.

  “No. Stay there,” Telisa said. “You’re on pain meds, your body took a shock, and besides, that hand isn’t fully trained to your nerve signals yet.”