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

“Unless
something happened to make them uninhabitable,” Jason said. “Or some kind of
collapse of their civilization.”

“They’re
aliens. Maybe they make buildings for other reasons, and still live in the
forest,” Telisa said. “Let’s investigate and we’ll learn what happened.”

“Okay,
let’s head out. I want to see this tower in person,” Caden said.

Imanol
bit off a snarky reply. As fun as it was to poke the wunderkind, he was anxious
to get started as well.

“Are
we going to camp there?” Siobhan asked.

“I’d
like to,” Telisa said. “But I guess we need to see it first.”

Imanol
spotted the tower in the distance. It was thin and hard to see. He started
toward it.

Soon
the entire team was walking across the burned ground. Five Terran scout robots
walked out ahead of them with a few attendant spheres. The spidery Terran
robots struggled as their thin legs sank into the fresh ash. They scuttled
along leaving deep rivulets behind.

Imanol
did not see any rocks. He supposed they might be covered by the ash. He
wondered if the battle sphere had detected any caves and neglected to mention
them.

Everyone
hefted a weapon. Imanol was surprised when he looked back and saw the battle
machine had stayed put.

“DM-109
isn’t coming with us,” he noted aloud.

“So
if we could find a ship somewhere else, we could give it the slip,” Siobhan
said.

Keeping
it positive. Ah, the young.

The
tower grew on the horizon as they approached. Soon they arrived at the edge of
the untouched forest. The vines and their huge leaves beyond the perimeter were
not even partially burned. Imanol was impressed. He did not see so much as a
wilted leaf.

Precision
as well as power. If I cut a hole through some trees with my laser, it would
probably leave a black spot on the last leaf. This energy weapon was perfectly
focused out to a range.

The
forest looked almost the same as it did in the sims they had been practicing
with. Heavy vines as thick as arms extended from the tall white tusk-shapes,
branching chaotically in all directions. Imanol knew some of the vines grew
even thicker, big enough to walk along. A few insect-sized things wandered out
onto the burned ground in confusion. Imanol looked at them warily. He felt glad
for his suit. It would take more than an average bug to bite through his
flexible armor.

“Bugs.
The universal constant,” Imanol muttered in disgust.

The
scout robots slipped into the dense plant cover and disappeared. Telisa traded
her rifle for a machete.

“I’ll
blaze the trail. The rest of you, watch the video feeds. Cilreth, watch our
six.”

I’ll
watch your six, Telisa
,
he thought. He never expressed such thoughts out loud, despite his love of trolling
the others. Telisa was stronger than he was and besides, how could he compete
with Magnus, dead or alive? She was the leader, and a pretty good one. He had
had a dozen inferior bosses on the frontier. Messing with her would force her
to do something to put him in line. That would be unpleasant.

Telisa
hacked into the forest with amazing speed. Her augmented body obviously
provided tremendous strength. The PIT team entered the forest behind her. Soon
Imanol was also marveling at Telisa’s endurance: she kept going forward easily
even though she had to hack every step of the way.

The
huge leaves were about as thick as a finger. The cut edges oozed a sap just as
Imanol would expect from a Terran plant. Imanol saw a few insects had already
stopped to drink the fluid leaking from the cut vines. He carefully waved his
hand in front of a few of the tiny creatures. They scampered for cover.

Okay
then. Something eats them. So when they see movement, they run.

“Too
bad our guardian didn’t burn a trail for us,” Caden said.

“Telisa
will have us there in no time,” Imanol said. They walked at a normal pace even
though she had to clear the way.

Finally
Telisa stopped to rest. Or so Imanol thought until he caught a glimpse of the
tower through a gap in the giant leaves. Telisa stood before a smooth white
wall. Though it had looked clean from their scans, he could now see it had a
thin coat of dirt and a few stains. The wall itself looked intact. It rose at a
slight angle rather than perpendicular to the ground.

Telisa
started to clear a walkway around it. The building was large up close. Larger
than the
New Iridar
. Whatever had made it obviously felt no need to make
buildings in rectangular prisms. The wall they had found gave way to planes
built at other angles within the next twenty meters. Hexagons were the most
common shape among the mess. The shape generally rose from the ground and
surrounded the base of the tower above, but otherwise it was crazily varied.

“There’s
no way in,” Siobhan observed as they moved further around the building without
finding any portals.

“Not
from down here. I think there are openings above,” Cilreth said.

“So
how the hell did they get in and out?” Caden asked.

“Well,
it might be this way to avoid letting critters from the forest in. To protect
them. Maybe they only accessed this place by air. There is that platform on the
top,” Telisa thought out loud.

“Maybe
they were big rats and they ran along the tops of the vines,” Imanol said.

“Is
that your professional opinion?” asked Cilreth.

Sure,
I’ll play along.

“Based
on evidence,” Imanol said defensively.

Telisa
launched a smart rope up the side of the building. She put away her machete and
grabbed her laser carbine in one hand. Then she launched herself up the side of
the building with a pull from her free arm and a jump. Telisa hurtled halfway
up the angled side of the building.

Imanol
and Jason traded looks.

Superhuman.

Caden
pulled himself up the rope, followed by Siobhan. Imanol shrugged, then turned
and grabbed a vine.

“What’re
you doing? Is that safe?” Jason asked.

“Only
one way to find out,” Imanol said, climbing up. Caden and Siobhan had been
climbing them since the very first of their simulations back on
New Iridar
.
Imanol had done the same thing in a couple of the simulations. It was pretty
easy to walk atop the biggest vines, but every now and then he would lose his
balance and fall.

“Well,
actually we have several ways to analyze those vines besides climbing on them,”
Cilreth said.

Imanol
ignored her. He reached the nexus of the vine he climbed and another, thicker
vine running almost horizontal to the ground. He stood up on the thicker vine
and turned to cover the others as they climbed the building. He examined the
tower above them.

“Those
tower handles are farther apart than would be comfortable for us to climb,”
Imanol noted over the team link channel. “So the aliens must be tall.”

“Or
long,” Siobhan said. “How long is the reach of a Blackvine?”

“Pretty
long, I think,” Caden said. “I mean, longer than a Terran’s reach.”

“Maybe
they’re not climbing rungs at all,” Telisa said.

“What
then?” Caden asked.

“They
might only be anchor points for attaching things. Or we don’t know yet.”

“I
like the tall theory because it’s a low grav planet. So makes sense that things
here would be taller, like Fast ’n Frightening here,” said Imanol, referencing
Siobhan.

“But
they didn’t come from here,” Cilreth said.

“But
they chose to stay here. So they might have come from a similar place. Also,
they may well have adapted themselves to the local environment.”

Like
Siobhan did
, he almost
said. He caught himself looking at Siobhan fairly often. She was tall and
beautiful. Terrans had been known to tweak a few genes here and there, to
produce adapted locals.

Telisa
came to the base of the tower. She completed a sweep with her own eyes,
checking the top of the building. Imanol decided if something bad was going to
happen up there it probably would have already gone down. He climbed off his
perch and headed for the rope in last place.

Chapter 6

Siobhan
made it to one of the flatter roofs of the crazy building. Telisa stood waiting
for her and Caden.

“Look
familiar?” Telisa asked. Siobhan took a quick scan of the top of the building.

It’s
just like the floating space habitat buildings, except it has a top and a bottom
, Siobhan thought.

“Yes.
And these are just like Blackvine doors. Except these are hexagonal.”

“The
Celarans are Blackvines, then,” Caden said. “This can’t be coincidence?”

“I
guess so,” Telisa said, though she did not sound confident of the conclusion.
Siobhan walked over to the nearest trap door. She tested it carefully. “Too
many details the same. The shape has changed, but the construction of it, the
resistance, very similar.”

“Some
of those eel-things could be in there,” Caden warned. “Those doors open from
either side with simple pressure, so wild animals could get in. Can’t the doors
lock? It seems like a useful function for any building made by any race.”

“They
don’t look broken. It must be by design. Jam it open with something,” Telisa
ordered. “I’ll do the same over there. If it looks clear, Caden and I will go
in at the same time.”

“We’re
not checking out the tower?”

Telisa
glanced up. “I think we’ve seen enough from above. I’ve been waiting a long
time to see what’s down here.”

Siobhan
took out her smart rope and told it to hold open the door. The rope pressed the
flaps open and then hugged each side to hold them. She sent her attendant into
the building.

Siobhan’s
attendant fed back an image of a nearly empty room with white walls. The walls
looked like they were covered in hexagonal white tile. Tiny holes dotted the
black floor like a huge sponge. Along one wall she saw five complex metal
devices. Another wall had rows of ropes or bungee cords running horizontally
across the room with a meter of space between each row. She saw no dirt or
dust.

It
looked somehow wrong to Siobhan, though she could not put her finger on it
until Caden commented.

“It’s
so different. There’s no clutter,” Caden said.

“Interesting.
The only buildings this clear in the Blackvine habitat were the factories,”
Telisa said.

“So
maybe they make something here,” Caden said. “Makes sense. It’s one big
building.”

Siobhan
had not seen anything that made her think it was a factory. Adaptive industry
was her area of expertise. She started looking for clues.

“If
it’s a factory, it’s reasonable to assume that source materials would be coming
in from the tower, or finished product would be lifted away from the tower. Yet
none of these doors are of significant size,” Siobhan said.

Telisa
and Caden absorbed that speech.

“I
agree, unless it was all moved in and out underground?” Telisa asked.

“Maybe
through big pipes. The result of processing could be some kind of liquid,”
Caden said.

“But
then why the tower?” Siobhan asked.

“Let’s
go in,” Telisa said. She withheld further judgement. “Send the attendant
farther ahead. Check the whole place for threats. Make sure there’s no
Blackvines here.”

Caden
and Telisa dropped down into opposite ends of the room through two doors. They
held their weapons ready. Siobhan took another look around outside. Cilreth and
Imanol had caught up to them. Jason stood by the tower.

“I’d
like to climb up and see if there’s anything interesting up there,” Jason said.

I
wonder if we should split up like that,
Siobhan thought.

“I’ll
head up with you,” Imanol said. “We’ll drop quickly if anything rears its ugly
head down here,” he added, looking at Cilreth.

Cilreth
took a long look at the tall tower. “Knock yourself out,” she said. “I’m on
lookout down here.” She cradled a laser rifle in her arms.

Siobhan
had to choose. The tower looked cool. It could be fun in low gravity. But she
wanted to work with Caden. She dropped down into the room after him. He stood
with a gladius in his hand. Telisa was examining machines on the wall.

“What’s
wrong?” Siobhan asked. Her hand found the handle of her shock baton.

“Nothing
yet,” Caden said. His sniper rifle was slung over his back and a pistol was at
his belt.

“Why
not your pistol?”

Caden
shrugged. “You have one. She has one, and the claw. Diversity in armament.”

“I
think it just makes you feel safer,” Siobhan told him over a private channel.
“Blood Glades gladiator.” He smiled.

“We
have attendants and scouts in here with us,” Telisa said absent mindedly. She
was holding a few thin metal rods that were part of the machine on the wall.
She moved them around. Siobhan had no idea what the thing was. It looked like a
folded up bat robot.

Siobhan
examined the tiles of the wall. Their separation boundaries were extremely
thin. She reached out and touched one. The tile depressed slightly under her
touch.

“Shit,”
she said. Caden instantly turned toward her. Telisa found her way over from the
other side.

“What?”
demanded Telisa.

“I
hope I haven’t actuated some device. This tile just moved so easily. Like
cardboard.”

Caden
walked over. He touched another tile. Its surface was flimsy. It moved a bit.
Then he pushed it further. It kept moving back, and back, until it fell through
the other side of the wall. They heard a light impact from the room beyond. The
hole showed the white sides of the other hexagonal prisms that fit together
perfectly to form the wall.

“The
wall is made of paper bricks? How could it be so flimsy?” he said.

Siobhan
slid another prism out of the wall below the one Caden had pulled out. She saw
one side had a crease. It was a lid.

“It’s
a container!” Siobhan said. “This isn’t a wall, it’s a stack of boxes!”

“Perfectly
arranged,” Caden noted. “They were so perfectly stacked I thought it was a wall
covered in tile.”

“Then
how are these things not toppling it over?” asked Telisa. She pulled on one of
the machines mounted in the wall. It slid forward easily. Telisa dug around in
the boxes behind it.

“Ah.
I see some support struts here where these are attached,” she said. “But I think
they pull right out of the wall.”

“What
is that thing?” Siobhan asked.

“A
robot. The way it unfolds, I would say it’s a flying robot. Well, a gliding one
at least.”

“Okay,
so, those things fly from the tower, grab stuff, and put it in the funky
hexagonal boxes,” Caden said. “So what’s in the boxes?”

For
once Telisa did not warn against making hasty assumptions. She knew Caden was
just voicing a theory out loud. Siobhan found the lip of the box. It opened
much like a manual Terran box that could not take link commands.

“It’s
filled with smaller wrapped blocks,” Siobhan said. “They’re light. I’ll open
one.”

Siobhan
slipped a hexagonal slab out of the end. She tried to rip open a wrapper.
Telisa offered Siobhan her tanto knife, but the material ripped easily. A
sticky liquid leaked out.

“Watch
it,” Telisa said. Siobhan held it out. Telisa had a clear plastic vial ready to
catch it. None of it touched them. Siobhan felt the thrill of danger.

This
could be poisonous, explosive, infectious... anything.

Telisa
took out an analyzer. “This will have to do,” she said. Siobhan decided that
meant she was missing real lab equipment. Telisa swabbed a sample and closed
her eyes to concentrate on the interface.

“Well,
there are a variety of molecules,” she said. “Here’s a familiar one,
kojibiose.”

“Koji
what?”

“A
disaccharide. This is a soup of energy molecules, I think. It’s all about
carbon making chains and rings with hydrogen and oxygen. I believe these are
food packets. If I’m right, the Celarans are very similar to us, really, for
aliens. They’re carbon based life,” Telisa said.

“If
these really are food packets,” Caden said.

“And
the food packets are for them and not alien visitors or prisoners,” Siobhan
said.

“Highly
likely. I suppose they could be hoarding poison. Or paint. Or whatever. I don’t
think it’s coincidence. We might even be able to digest some of this
ourselves,” Telisa said. She repacked her analyzer.

“We
don’t need to know just yet,” Siobhan said. “Let’s not taste it.”

“Caution?
From you?” Caden sniped.

“You
channeling Imanol?” she said back.

“We
can take a look at the local herbivores and see if their bodies run on this
kind of chemistry,” Telisa said. “I’m betting they do. I want to capture some
specimens and find out.”

“
Clacker
’s
labs would have made that easy,” Cilreth said over the channel. Apparently she
was listening in from the roof.

“I
may have enough to get it done,” Telisa said. “When those two come down from
the tower, ask them to try and catch us some critters. Not insects; I’d like to
test something larger. Preferably a herbivore.”

“Will
do.”

“The
food in the boxes may be processed. It may or may not be what the robots
collect,” Siobhan said. “Yes, maybe they collected this stuff from the forest.
But it hardly seems necessary. Surely they have ways of mass producing food
that are more efficient.”

“Maybe.
We think they brought these vines with them from their planet,” Caden said. “So
that rules out that they discovered some amazing alien substance they really
wanted, right?”

“Ah
yes. If we were right, this is a regular forest to them. Not alien. So if these
packets come from stuff they collected from the forest, then this is a regular
farming operation to them. Not a setup that collects samples for study,” Telisa
said.

“Okay,
well I think we’ll find a processing center in this building if the food was
made here. Then we’ll know,” Siobhan said.

Telisa
brought a bag out of her pack and put the wall machine into it. Then they went
to a hexagonal door flap in the wall. The door was placed a high step above the
floor. Siobhan noticed for the first time that the wall near the door did not
have the hexagonal pattern on it.

“A
real wall,” she said.

Telisa
nodded. “There’s a scout in there. From what it sees, I think I found our
processing center.”

They
followed Telisa through the interior of the building. Once again there was no
clutter as they expected from the Blackvines. They walked past more fake walls
made from boxes of the syrup packets. Tucked into the middle of the building
was a large white machine built in a smooth O-shape. It was the size of a
multi-passenger land vehicle. Its outer surface gleamed like new plastic or
ceramic.

Siobhan
immediately saw a large upward-facing intake.

“Okay,
here’s our processor,” she said.

“Which
direction is it flowing?” Caden asked.

“This
way,” Siobhan said, pointing.

“It’s
just a circle.”

“Then
it’s filtered. Maybe chemically altered, maybe not. But it comes in from here
and leaves from there.”

“Well,
that door right above the feed is where the tower is.”

“Cilreth,
could you check the base of the tower please?” Siobhan said. “Is there a door
on the surface of the building inside the support skeleton?”

It
only took a couple of seconds for Cilreth to answer.

“Ah
yes, I see a very fine line across the surface here. There’s a rail too. Lemme
guess. Stuff is transported out that door up to the platform to be carried
away? Or did I get it backwards?”

“Maybe
both ways,” Telisa said.

“Did
the Blackvines eat this syrup?” Siobhan said. “I thought Maxsym said they had
some kind of photosynthesis.”

“He
did say that,” Telisa said. “But maybe it’s a kind of luxury to be able to eat
something you did not produce in your own body?”

“Or
maybe they need it when they travel to dark places. Underground, underwater, or
in space?” Caden asked.

Telisa
did not comment further. Siobhan examined the beautiful white machine while
Telisa and Caden searched every nook and cranny. They found only more boxes,
more flexible ropes on the walls, and more of the machines Telisa suspected
were gliding robots.

Siobhan
got a scan of the inside of the machine from an attendant and started trying to
make sense of it. Caden lost interest and moved on. She noted from chatter on
the shared channel that Imanol and Jason had returned from their climb. Cilreth
passed on the request to capture some animals, so they went into the forest.
She felt a little nervous for them, but all she could do was flip through the
video feeds of every attendant and scout they had deployed. She did not see any
reason for alarm.

“What
do you think?” Telisa asked her a few minutes later. Siobhan focused her eyes
on her real sight and moved her PV aside.

“It’s
basically an extruder,” Siobhan said. “If you’re right, a food extruder. The
contents are modestly heated, pressurized, pushed out, then cut into these
hexagons, and wrapped.”

“Makes
sense,” Telisa said. “Can you tell if it’s still working? Or when it last
worked?”

“Not
until we figure out their electronics. Those are... well, alien. As alien as
Shiny’s machine control components are to us. I can tell you one thing, though,
it’s out of the materials used to make these boxes, and there’s none of the
food mixture left in there, either. Judging from the age of some suspected
lubricants in this system, I’d say it’s been down for less than a hundred
years.”

“Wow.
A very recent alien presence here,” Cilreth said from outside. “It fits though.
I think the third installation has an active automated security system.”