Parker Interstellar Travels 6: The Celaran Ruins (10 page)

Cilreth
shook her head.

“You
always have some other theory that sounds about as reasonable,” Cilreth
complained. “Well how about this: what if the houses
were never
inhabited?”

“Ah,
that’s a good one. I don’t see any wear and tear inside here. So a team of
machines and specialists came ahead and set up this little town. But the rest
of the Celarans never arrived,” Telisa said.

“I
don’t know. But it seems like a good possibility. Could be anything from an
accident, to a war, to a simple change of plan.”

“They
could still be on the way,” Telisa said.

“Cthulhu
sleeps. Don’t even mention the possibility!”

What
will they do if they come in here and find us squatting their colony?

They
finished up their current house and walked out the other side. Two things
happened at once. A shadow fell across them. Cilreth’s emotion management suite
informed her that her three hour cycle of emotion suppression had ended.

A
thick roped net fell over Cilreth. Its surface felt rough on her cheek, almost
spiny.

“What
the—”

Cilreth
crouched and looked at the edge of the net, by the rail. A long, thin leg
grabbed the edge of the platform and contracted, pulling itself tight with the
edge.

Some
living thing is trying to catch us!

A
wave of terror rose up and paralyzed Cilreth. It was as if she had never felt
emotion before in her life. It smashed through her brain and destroyed all
rational thought. Cilreth realized she was screaming.

Pain
shot up Cilreth’s left arm. She looked down and saw a thick pincer closing on
her forearm. The pincer was larger than her hand. Her Veer suit was probably
the only reason her hand was still attached. Cilreth’s eyes resolved more parts
creature amid thick net. The pinchers and the eyestalks were part of a large
but incredibly thin creature. Then she understood more.

That
spiny net... is its body!

“I’m
not a bird you stupid thing!” Telisa said nearby. Cilreth felt Telisa
struggling through the net. When Telisa moved Cilreth could feel the tension in
the net altering. Cilreth thrashed, but she did not have the strength to force
her way out. The pincer could not really hurt her through her armored suit,
still, raw terror directed her actions.

“Cilreth!
Your machete!” Telisa urged through their channel.

“What’s
wrong?” Caden’s voice came. Cilreth realized she had screamed across all her
open channels. Some part of her brain had decided she wanted
everyone
to
hear and come help her.

She
felt a series of sharp impacts across her back. The net tightened from above.
Cilreth still saw a way out: A hole where the edge of the net rose over the
rail. A buglike leg still scratched around on the platform trying to close it
up. Cilreth scrambled forward, desperate to flee before the escape route
disappeared.

“Stay
calm. Can you get your machete?” Telisa said.

Siobhan
heard the words but she did not listen. Instead she dove through the hole and
right off the platform, flying head-first for the ground.

A
vine hit her legs, flipped her over, then another vine flipped her again. She
lost track of up and down. Light... dark... light, then impact. She landed on
her stomach amid a pile of dead vines and the stubby little purple plants that
grew over them on the vine forest floor.

“Hang
on! We’re en route!” Caden yelled on the common channel.

She
heard the sounds of struggle above. Cilreth staggered to her feet. She started
to run as the fear thrilled through her unabated. She ran around one spire
trunk and leaped over another mound of the thick ground plants.

“We
were attacked, but I’ve cut my way out,” Telisa said over the channel. “It’s
still alive. And Cilreth is gone.”

Cilreth
approached the next spire. She dodged vines high and low. When she reached the
base, she looked back to see if the thing followed.

The
ground gave way beneath her. Cilreth fell again. This time, her back scraped a
stone and she landed on her back, in a partially upright position. Her suit
protected her. In a flash the fear was gone.

I
abandoned her
, Cilreth
thought.
What the hell is wrong with me?

Cilreth’s
eyes had trouble adjusting to the darkness. The hole above was a beacon of
light. She avoided looking back up, knowing it would keep her pupils dilated.

A
rustling noise came from nearby. It sounded familiar but she could not place
it.

She
felt fear rise again, but this time there was nothing abnormal about it. She
had control. She reached for her machete but it was not there. Instead she drew
her stunner.

I
can control it now. And I have a stunner.

Her
weapon reported readiness to her link. It had found a target. Then Cilreth lost
consciousness.

***

“Cilreth!
Where are you?” Siobhan asked for the tenth time. Finally an answer came.

“I’m...
I fell.”

Caden
leaped to the next platform from his spot on a thick vine. Given the slightly
lower gravity, he was able to clear the rail and land at the next house. An
attendant raced beside him, ready to give him a nudge this way or that if
needed.

“I
have your position, just hang on,” Telisa said over the channel. Even though it
was not her real voice, but her thoughts sent over the link, he could tell she
was busy from the choppiness of her words. “The creature is retreating now. I’m
unharmed.”

“Net
creature? Yeech,” Siobhan said to Caden on their private channel.

It
wasn’t a match for Telisa. I wonder if she would have made it if she was her
normal old self? I doubt it.

Everyone
checked their map and saw Cilreth. She was less than 100 meters away through
the vines.

“There’s
something else,” Cilreth said. Her voice sounded tired. Caden thought she sounded
hurt.

“Go,”
Telisa said.

“Well,
it’s a Blackvine. It’s giving me... air. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s saving me or
killing me.”

We
need to get there now!

Caden
made another long jump. His attendant gave him a push at the midpoint of his
trajectory so he could land atop the curve of one of the trunks.

“Must
be saving me,” Cilreth went on. “It was not giving me anything when I went
unconscious. Now it is.”

“I’m
at the hole,” Telisa said. Caden arrived at the house where they had been
attacked. He checked the position. The hole was not far. Caden had outpaced
Siobhan on the way here. He suddenly felt shame.

I
should not leave her behind. What if she got attacked now?

Siobhan
appeared within ten seconds. She caught his worried look and smiled.

“I’ll
yell eight ways from extinction if some frackjammer rails on me,” she told him
on their private channel. “Just go help out.”

Caden
slipped down a vine and ran across the ground to the hole. The small plants and
refuse covered the forest floor at least six inches deep.

There
could be other holes we never saw.

“Could
it be a trap?” Caden asked as he approached Telisa.

“I
doubt it. Just keep your weapons out,” Telisa said. She hovered over to the
hole. Caden’s attendant peeled out of orbit and plunged into the ground to join
Telisa’s inside.

“Cilreth!”
Telisa exclaimed. Caden checked the feed. The attendant was looking at Cilreth.
She lay propped up against a rock in the dark tunnel below. A Blackvine stood
beside her. As Caden watched, it grasped the end of a smart rope from above in
one of its tendrils and held it out for Cilreth.

It
is
helping her.
Maxsym was right when he said we could cooperate with them.

“Can
you believe that thing?” Cilreth said. She grabbed the smart rope weakly. It
wrapped itself through the belt fasteners at her waist.

“It’s
not tool using? The net was part of it?” Siobhan asked.

“It
is
the net! That’s its main body!”

“Impressive,”
Caden said. He looked Cilreth over. “Did it bite you? I saw pincers and maybe
even a stinger.”

“Then
why aren’t you asking if it pinched me? Or stung me?”

“Okay,
I guess you’re fine,” Telisa said dryly.

“I’m
sorry guys,” Cilreth said. “I’m just a coward I guess. We need to get Magnus
back so I can resume my job of babysitting the ship while you guys let the
alien monsters chase after you.”

“Next
time flip on your emotion suppressor,” Telisa suggested. “I found a survival
trigger for natural emergencies. It can turn on automatically if it detects
you’re terrified.”

“Yes,
but... I already had mine on. It had just timed out when we got attacked.”

Oh,
wow. She really is struggling to do this. Not cut out for it, I guess,
Caden thought.

“We
need your real skills,” Caden said. “You can leave the exploration part to us.”

“She’s
a better explorer than us,” Telisa said. She turned to Cilreth. “You found the
Blackvine!”

“Are
we going to... bring it out of there or what?” Caden asked.

“We’ll
see,” Telisa said. “Where are Imanol and Jason?”

Chapter 9

“Let’s
go find some more,” Imanol said.

Jason
nodded. “The others are moving into their zones, too.”

“You
take the lead, Salesman,” Imanol said. “I got your back.”

“Thanks,”
Jason said sarcastically.

Imanol
smiled. Jason was warming up to his new name nicely. Since Jason had previously
interacted with clients wanting to take deep space trips with Parker
Interstellar Travels, Imanol had settled upon calling him Salesman. Unlike the
other crew members, Jason took Imanol’s needles and never got mad. He just
focused on learning. Imanol liked that, and recognized it was a good thing,
because he finally had someone he could partner with.

Imanol
rested his hand upon his laser pistol. He felt the weight of his projectile
pistol on the other hip. Though he was joking around with Jason, he was ready
to fight anything they found on short notice.

The
first house in their zone was only about 100 meters and three spires away from
where they stood on a platform at the edge of the shared zone. Like the others,
Imanol could not resist the temptation to get there by vine instead of dropping
back down and hacking through all the detritus on the forest floor. The largest
vines here were as thick as his torso and branched to form a huge leaf about
every three meters. He spotted one that was almost level and climbed out onto
it.

“This
is crazy, it’s like being an ant,” Imanol grumbled.

“It’s
a long way down,” Jason said casually, in that way he spoke when he was worried
about something but pretended not to be.

“There
are other vines below, plus all that crap at the bottom. And the gravity is a
bit lighter. If you fall in your Veer suit, you’ll be fine. Hell, by the end of
the day Caden and Siobhan will be doing it for fun.”

Jason
stared down. “Yes, I guess you’re right. Let’s go for it.”

Imanol
moved farther down the vine. Jason climbed out after him. Imanol scanned the
video feed from their attendants ahead. He did not see any dangers, yet he felt
worried.

I
just got done telling him this would be a breeze. Damn.

“So
now I’ve convinced you it’s safe, let me convince you otherwise. Sooner or
later, something is going to get dangerous. I’m just saying, it’s probably not
the climbing. There’s going to be a jaguar, or you know, whatever passes for a
jaguar on this weird ass planet, and it’s going to try and eat us. That’s the
best case scenario. Worst case, something smarter than us with advanced
technology will kill us before we even know it’s there. Possibly from
kilometers away. Or more.”

Jason
sent the nonverbal link signal for acknowledgement. Jason paused. Imanol
imagined he was checking the status of his weapons and scanning the scout’s
video feeds. They kept going.

At
first Imanol felt wobbly on the vines and he had to keep crouching to grab a
branch or another vine to steady himself. Then he started to get the hang of
it, but he found himself paying all his attention on the branch below him and
none of it on the other video feeds or his general surroundings. So he started
to stop every thirty seconds and do a periphery check.

Within
a few minutes they arrived at the next house. It looked to be in good shape.
The exterior was a dark green like the others. Though its angles looked crazy,
Imanol could tell it had been constructed from a lot of smaller components like
the other houses they had seen so far.

“Anyone
home?” Jason said behind him.

“I
don’t think so,” Imanol said. One of his attendants was inside. It did not spot
anything different about this dwelling.

“We
need to do a walk through of every one,” Jason said excitedly. “There has to be
some clues around here!”

Imanol
shrugged. “Yeah, probably. If they’re all empty, I imagine Telisa and Cilreth
will start tearing them all apart to examine the insides.”

He
pushed open the trap door and slipped in. Everything looked the same. He
sniffed loudly. The air seemed clean.

Cleaners
are still working. And so is this house, whoever it belongs to.

“Exact
same temperature in here,” Jason said. “Close to 22 C.”

Imanol
looked at the flexible bands on the wall and tested the strength of a couple.
They reminded him of towel rods except they stretched like rubber bands. They
looked familiar. He realized they had been present at the space habitat as
well. It was just that they had been mostly obscured by junk there.

“It
feels like a brand new home doesn’t it? Or were they just really good at
building and keeping everything looking new?” Imanol asked.

“I
don’t know,” Jason said.

Imanol
pictured the space habitat again. He did not think that had been as new, but he
could not tell, because those houses had been so cluttered. After a few
minutes, Imanol called it.

“Next,”
he said.

Jason
reluctantly followed Imanol out of the empty dwelling. Imanol paused to plot a
course through their search zone. It contained about thirty houses. He rejected
the idea of a search spiral and chose a rough circle with zig-zagging
perimeter.

Imanol
sent one attendant way ahead to run the entire search path without waiting for
them. The other three attendants assigned to them would deploy two to the next
house and one trailing. Telisa had placed the old Terran bug scout robots along
a route heading back to the
New Iridar
to secure a retreat path out of
the settlement.

They
set out. Imanol became competent though not brilliant at navigating his way
along the vines. Sometimes they had to ascend or descend on detours to get
where they wanted if they felt too lazy to deploy a smart rope. Imanol did not
mind; it gave him a chance to experience the planet from the point of view of a
native. The houses proved empty. Even Jason’s excitement at his second major
outing on an alien world deflated as it became clear the place was not only
deserted, but very clean and devoid of interesting clues.

“There’s
no signs of an advanced transportation system,” Imanol said as they headed to
their twelfth house. “So they flew or they had flying cars, I think.”

“Could
be a subway,” Jason said. “The entrances would be buried under all that wild
growth near the ground.”

Imanol
shrugged.

“Speaking
of wild growth,” Jason said as he pointed out through the vine forest.

Imanol
followed Jason’s line of sight. At first he thought there was nothing but dense
forest to see. Then he caught sight of some enormously thick vine stalks. The
forest rose higher in that direction. Jason saw some kind of smooth green
barrier like a natural membrane or perhaps a wall that was designed to look
natural.

“Something
odd there,” Jason said. “Any ideas?”

“I
don’t know,” Imanol said.

“Some
really big vine cords coming out of there,” Jason said. “The rest of that...
looks like a huge husk or something.”

“Yah,
a big shell,” Imanol agreed. The vines were so thick and dense around the shell
he could not see anything else in there. “Siobhan said the tree trunks are
artificial. Maybe all the vines started out like this. Some kind of giant vine
egg. When they Celaraformed this place, they dropped a few of these around and
they started the vines off.”

“Wow.
I guess I don’t have any better theory. My attendant can’t even get in there.
It’s just solid vine stems coming out of that area. They do seem to be older
and thicker there than anywhere else. Maybe the vines are the Celarans? There
could be a huge brain in there.”

Imanol
shrugged. “Then why the houses?”

“Maybe
to house their alien friends, like Blackvines. Or they could even be for
creatures that serve them like bees serve flowers.”

“Sounds
farfetched, but I can’t say that’s impossible,” Imanol said. “With some other
equipment we could scan that cluster and see if there’s anything scary in
there. I’ll mark it down and we can talk about it later.”

“You’re
not curious to look?”

“If
the attendant can’t get in there, what chance do we have? We can check it from
orbit, too. I don’t know. Let’s take note of it, clear the houses, and see what
the others think.”

Jason
accepted that. Imanol checked the video feeds again and kept on their planned
course. The next house was in the same shape as the others so far, yet he saw
it was different immediately.

“Something
there. On the rail,” Imanol said, drawing his laser.

Strips
of cloth or plastic had been tied to the orange rail. Imanol saw yellow, red
and blue. Something else sat on the platform, some curved metal snake-shape.

“Yes!
Finally something worth finding!” Jason said excitedly. He pulled out his
stunner and crouched on the vine.

“Questions
first shoot later,” Imanol said. “These are artifacts, and probably did not
belong to my theoretical jaguar.”

“Right.”

Two
attendants hovered in. Imanol saw the metal snake had two three-fingered graspers
on each end. The shape reminded him very much of the gliding snake things they
had seen in the trees, though this little item was not at all flattened to
catch the air. It did not look like it could glide.

The
attendants pushed through two trap doors and checked the interior. It looked
empty.

“No
one home,” Imanol said. He scanned the surrounding vines. He did not see
anything but vines, leaves, and insects.

Are
we being watched?

Jason
went forward and dropped onto the platform. He looked at the colorful strips
and the metal snake, then pushed into the house. Imanol stopped and picked up
the device. It flexed in his hands. The middle section was like a stiff smart
rope. He pulled the graspers in different directions with each hand. The device
lengthened easily.

This
connects two things. Two vines? Two structural struts? Why does it look like
the gliding snake-things? Maybe those damn things are the Celarans after all.

“I
found something!” Jason called.

“Something
new?” Imanol asked, but Jason was already there, holding out a black tube with
a hole in the end. It looked like a drill without the bit, or perhaps a pistol
with no handle.

“What
is it?” Imanol asked.

“I
have no idea, of course,” Jason said.

“Where
was it?”

“Hanging
from one of those flexing racks. See this little spiral? It wraps around the
rail if you hold it right there.”

Imanol
saw a thin black filament wrapped up into a spiral on the end opposite the
aperture.

So
you can hang it... I bet it would hang on a vine, too.

“It’s
a tool,” Imanol said. He eyed the hole in the end. “Or a weapon. Don’t point
that hole at me.”

“Of
course not,” Jason said. “Still, it’s a danger until we learn about it. Could
be a grenade for all we know.”

“Then
put it into the cargo carry of one of our old fashioned bots,” Imanol
suggested. “I think we have one around here.”

“What
about that grabber thing there?”

“I
could be wrong, it just doesn’t look as dangerous. Judgement call. I’ll put
this thing in my pack.”

The
old six-legged bots were crawling slowly through the forest closer to the
shared zone. They were at an extreme disadvantage to the Vovokan attendants
which could fly and hover wherever they wanted. Still, having a small carry
compartment was an advantage this time.

Jason
paused. Imanol assumed he was waiting for the arrival of a robot. He paced the
outside platform, looking into the forest.

So
many animals. There must be some predators... unless the Celarans just decided
to leave those behind. I guess that makes sense. Terrans don’t bring dangerous
predators to the regions to be settled. We drop them on islands and place them
into reserved areas far from the people when we decide to bring native species
to alien planets.

Most
of Earth’s animal species had been preserved only as genetic samples. The
destruction of the environment had brought so many animals to extinction, and
only slowly had Terrans brought the creatures back. It was difficult and
expensive to re-establish stable ecosystems which inevitably involved at least
hundreds of plant and animal types.

Imanol
saw a scout approaching on his link’s overview map. He faced its general
direction, trying to hear it approach. It did not work. Imanol saw the bug
machine first, scuttling along on its thin metal legs. It left marks on the
vine where its legs had been. Imanol guessed it had to squeeze hard to
stabilize itself as it moved.

Jason
met the robot on a thick vine and dropped his find into the robot’s carrying
hold. Then the machine turned and retreated back into the forest.

“Might
as well tell it to head back to the
New Iridar
,” Imanol said.

“Okay.
I sure hope nothing happens to it. Can you imagine how pissed Telisa would be
if we lost the only artifact around here so far?”

“Yes,
it would suck, but we have a lot here. The pieces of the houses are
sophisticated enough we could learn a lot. Just studying the main battery might
be amazing. I don’t know. I’m not much of a scientist.”

“Me
neither, but I’d like to learn.”

Imanol
suppressed an annoyed face.

Young
people. Enough time and energy to learn everything in the whole damn world.

“I’m
stoked to check the other houses out now,” Jason said. “I was thinking we had
found a big fat zero here.”

Imanol
nodded. He sent the attendants ahead and started in the direction of the next
house. Jason led the way. The new recruit remained cautious despite the
excitement of the find. He moved across the vines well enough, showing no more
fear of the height, and stopped often to check around.