Parker Interstellar Travels 6: The Celaran Ruins (13 page)

“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.

This
isn’t the rip-roaring to go Fast and Frightening that I know.

“What
is it?” Telisa asked.

“Uhm...
I want to take it more by the book this time,” she said. “Minimal risk, okay?”

“Yes.
That’s okay. There’s no book, though. This isn’t the Space Force. Today, it’s
just, anything happens, you get the hell out of there, got it?”

“Thanks.
I don’t mean to let you down. It’s just...”

“You
have something to lose now? That’s fine. I get it. We want a look today. That’s
it. You take a look, you get out, work done.”

Siobhan
sent her the nonverbal link acknowledgement.

“Me
first,” Telisa said. “If there’s no immediate response, come in after me. See
what you can find. Take a peek in those buildings. We don’t need to bring
anything back, unless it’s very easy.”

Siobhan
ack’d her again.

“Don’t
stay for longer than an hour this first time out,” Telisa said. “I’ll meet you
back here. Once we have some idea what’s going on, maybe we can try a longer
stint next.”

Siobhan
nodded. “Understood.” For the first time, Telisa believed Siobhan would be
prudent. For some reason, that actually worried her, because it was a reminder
that Siobhan and Caden were like her and Magnus had been.

Quit
thinking like that. Magnus is alive. We’ll be together again.

They
each called in their two attendants and tucked them away in their small packs.
Then they activated their stealth systems from the cover of the leaves. Telisa
walked out. She saw Siobhan on her tactical, but Siobhan would not be able to
see her. Telisa’s alien cloaking sphere would not announce itself to Siobhan’s
link or her UNSF stealth suit. Siobhan turned off her directed tactical
communications, so that she dropped off Telisa’s view completely. They had
decided full stealth was important, even though it would take a lot to detect
the space force’s DTC suite running on the suit.

Telisa
actuated a mission timer. Cilreth had finally had a chance to learn how to
recharge the cloaking sphere, so she had tested it to exhaustion. Under normal
conditions with minimal movement, it had lasted for 29 hours. Telisa assumed if
she remained active and generated a lot of noise that had to be dampened, that
probably reduced the lifespan of the device.

The
fence before them was more of a light net. No doubt it was strong. The
hexagonal spaces looked like they would not quite allow a human head through.

It
looks like a bird net,
Telisa thought.
They were flyers, or what they needed to keep out was a
flyer. Or did they just prefer to be able to see through the barrier? A human
facility would have a wall if necessary, with optical sensors placed around the
outside.

The
net rose 30 meters high between the towers. As they had seen from their
observing attendants, the towers would deal with anything coming in from above
that. Telisa had toyed with the idea of tunneling underneath the complex, but
that would be a much more complex approach. If Shiny had still been on the
team, they might well have done that. The Vovokan would be great at working
underground since he had come from that environment on his homeworld.

She
walked toward the fence and waited. Since Telisa had a tanto, her breaker claw,
and a smart pistol, the plan called for Siobhan to cut the fence with her new
laser pistol. Telisa smiled. Siobhan had happily turned in her 5-shot stunner
for the laser pistol after they fled Sol. Imanol had looked on approvingly,
calling the stunner a “core worlder weapon”. He meant a weapon for civilized
folk. It had been very painful to the flat alien body Telisa herself had
inhabited, but otherwise the stunners were so carefully targeted to affect
humans, and even then to a very limited degree, they were not likely to be
effective against a random alien creature. Telisa doubted Shiny would be
bothered by a stunner.

Siobhan
started cutting. A section of the fence fell to the ground in a light breeze.
Telisa moved forward quickly at first, covering a lot of ground. She ran over
twenty meters onto the flat surface. She thought of the sensors on Skyhold that
had noticed her weight.

Here’s
hoping the attendants didn’t miss any surface sensors.

Telisa
turned toward the buildings and waited. She did not see any response to her
incursion or the damage to the net. She started to walk over to her side of the
complex beyond. The open area was large. The closest building was over a
hundred meters away.

Some
movement caught her eye. It was one of the feeds from a scout machine spying
from the forest where they had cut through. It saw a large machine approaching
the net on low treads.

As
I suspected. That vine-cutter is a multi-role machine. So Celaran.

Telisa
felt encouraged that she had gained a feel for the alien race. Though so many
things remained a mystery, she knew a thing or two about them.

Telisa
loped toward the nearest building. She did not see any obvious entrances at the
ground level. She approached closer to look for cracks in the surface that
might indicate a flush door. She kept walking around the big building. A glance
or two back the way she had come told her that the machine had started to
repair the net with an unfamiliar tool. The tool was built into one of the
arms, and the other arm ended in six long fingers, three on each side in
opposition.

Six
fingers. Like Celarans? Do Celarans even have fingers?

Some
xenobiologists believed sophisticated manipulators were required in intelligent
creatures. Something that did not manipulate its environment did not often need
to be very smart. Telisa understood the idea, but she did not think it was an
absolute. Probable, yes, but not a requirement.

The
building had smooth walls around its perimeter, and the other buildings looked
the same.

No
doors around the sides. Just like the first tower building. They are flyers,
they have to be. Or had to be.

Telisa
turned her attention upwards. The buildings had complex roofs. She had spotted
trap doors up there in the initial orbital scans. She referenced her link map
of the place and found the nearest door visible from above.

She
took a smart rope out of her pack. It remained within her stealth envelope, though
when she used it, at least part of the rope would become visible. She gave the
rope instructions, then threw it up with a lightning move. The rope hurtled
directly to the top of the wall before her, then a few seconds most of it
dangled down. Telisa compressed herself, then launched upwards with a powerful
contraction of her superhuman muscles.

She
caught the rope and pulled herself up within another two seconds. Once at the
top, she retracted the rope and hid it again. She moved to another spot on the
roof and waited.

Something
came to investigate. A black disc flew over to where the rope had been exposed.
Telisa froze and watched it. She observed the turret on the top of the machine
rotate. She saw an opening there, moving about and wondered what kind of weapon
it was. Apparently it could be brought to bear on anything in the hemisphere
above the top half of the machine by moving side to side as well as altering
inclination.

I
wonder if it can fly upside down.

Within
ten seconds it gave up and flew away. The complex had noted an anomaly and sent
a machine to investigate. Was it a smart AI ready to catch her next clue? Or
just a dumb automaton that relied more upon firepower than brains? A Terran
complex might have a central AI to control a squadron of guard machines. Telisa
caught herself imagining this complex was controlled the same way.

Telisa
decided the security machine might serve several functions like everything else
the Celarans had made. She hoped that made it a mediocre combat machine at
best.

She
walked over to the nearest trap door and regarded it. Certainly whatever
investigated the rope would take note of the door being used? Would it then set
a trap for her? Telisa took the risk and slipped inside.

The
building’s interior was almost completely open. At first Telisa thought it was
a cluttered hangar. Then she saw that work areas had been methodically placed
throughout and separated by short walls of about waist height. The entire floor
space was sectioned off into separate areas about as large as the
New Iridar
.
She stood on a platform with no path down.

It’s
like one giant atrium! Makes sense. Flyers just use wide open space where
Terrans would have hallways and stairs.

Telisa
scanned the open platforms. Each platform had different types of machines. She
saw one platform with an assembly that seemed to be making short towers only
about 3 meters tall. Another cell had dozens of dodecahedral shapes stacked
along its perimeter.

A
factory maybe? Each area either stores, or creates, some different item. Time
to steal something.

Telisa
walked to the edge of the work area she had landed in. A series of silver and
gold batons were affixed to the short wall around the edge of the space. She
walked over and carefully released one from the wall. Her cloaking device
decided it was part of her equipment and made it disappear. To Telisa, the
stealthed item became ghostly, just as she saw her own arms and legs.

She
had no idea what it was, but it was small, and light, so she slipped it into
her pack.

Okay.
I promised Siobhan just a look. Time to move on.

She
took her prize back to the door. There, she looked took a second to look in all
directions. She saw no signs of anything she could recognize as a threat. She
saw something black hanging on a rod by the door. The rod was just like they
had seen in the houses. Telisa looked closer. Some soft piece of black material
hung there. It had silvery buttons or devices woven into it. Telisa saw black
strings along an edge like laces or loose ties. She carefully lifted it from
the rod and put it into her pack.

Telisa
wondered what Celaran visual sensors looked like. Was something watching the
door? Or did the door just report activity about opening and closing? Did it
see everything that passed through? She pushed her way back out the door, ready
for anything.

Back
outside, she saw no sign of the flying discs she half expected. She moved away
back to the edge and started to wonder if she could just jump back down. Then
she saw three glider machines criss-crossing the grounds below.

Something’s
up. The machines know we’re here. Time to get out.

Telisa
hesitated. She decided even her amazing host body might break a leg dropping
down from this height.

I
could sacrifice the rope. Leave it behind as a distraction. The drawback being,
I’d be leaving behind a clue as to who had come snooping around.

Telisa
told the rope to drop her about five meters and then let go of the top. She
took out her attendants as the rope hooked over the top of the building and
wrapped around her waist. She hopped over the edge and told her attendants to
dampen her fall.

The
rope held her part of the way down, then it let go of the top and pulled itself
back to her. She accelerated toward the flat lot below, though more slowly in
the low gravity. Her attendants pushed hard against each of her hands, slowing
her more. At the bottom, she landed and absorbed the impact well.

Telisa
was congratulating herself on the agile landing when she looked up and saw one
of the disks headed right for her. She simultaneously released the attendants
and told them to defend her from close range. The disk rapidly closed. There
was only one more second.

Telisa
ducked.

The
machine flew right over her and continued on, gaining speed. Telisa fumbled and
brought out her breaker claw. She decided not to attack since the machine
apparently did not see her.

It’s
headed toward Siobhan’s area fast. Must be trouble.

Telisa
saw another glider machine in the distance on a parallel course. Then another.

She
needs my help.

Telisa
moved quickly after the machine that had almost struck her, but as she
considered the problem, she realized a distraction might be more valuable.

Maybe
if I attacked one of the towers... damn, we should have arranged for a signal
to make the others create an external distraction for us.

Telisa
decided to follow the machines and see what had happened. She ran as fast as
she could to keep up as they flew past one building and around another. Telisa
considered dropping her cloak for just long enough to ask Imanol for a
distraction. The alien machines were all around her. At least five of them
would see her if she dropped her cover.

It
would only take them a split second to react to me. I wouldn’t make it if they
wanted to shoot.

Something
lay huddled on the ground just ahead. There was a dark spot. A pool of blood?
Telisa’s heart skipped a beat.

Telisa
hurried forward. She saw the broken remains of one of the glider machines.
There was a scorch mark on the artificial surfacing a meter from its slagged
pieces.