Parker Interstellar Travels 6: The Celaran Ruins (4 page)

Telisa
looked away. “I should have trusted you all more, and him less.”

Chapter 4

Weeks
later the
New Iridar
arrived at the system Shiny had ordered the PIT
team to investigate. The target system had no name, but the UNSF had a set of
rules for naming systems based upon their location relative to Earth. The
auto-naming algorithm called it the Idrick Piper System for casual
conversation, and there was a long universal identifier to go with it that no
one would remember. Cilreth almost stashed the UUID away in her link cache,
then decided she could just recalculate it as needed.

“Seven
planetary bodies,” Cilreth summarized to the team. She worked from her
quarters, where she had set up a smaller version of her isolated workspace she
had built on the
Clacker
. It was a sad comparison to the old one, which
had made her feel like the mastermind at the center of a massive crime
syndicate. Now she felt like a teenager operating out of a frontier basement.

“The
target planet will be something we can visit in person,” Telisa said from
elsewhere on the ship. “I don’t think Shiny would send us to investigate a gas
giant, at least not without the means to survive there.”

Cilreth
eliminated most of the planets based upon their environments, leaving two
candidates. She told the
New Iridar
to scan both of them. The initial
summaries came through in the few minutes it took to send energy pulses out to
the bodies, receive the reflections, and analyze them. Idrick Piper IV was a
vast brown vat of mud. Some compounds existed there that hinted at primitive
life. Idrick Piper V held vast forests and signs of a wider variety of life.
Several massive constructs were spotted among the natural flora which the
computer labeled as artificial.

“The
fifth planet is almost certainly the spot,” Telisa said. “Bring us closer.”

“Scanning
is a priority,” Cilreth said. “Should we send down some hardware?”

“Yes.
Send twenty attendants to gather details.”

“So
many? Aren’t they a valuable resource?” Cilreth asked.

“We
don’t want to run out,” Telisa sent Cilreth privately. “But the fewer
attendants we have, the less eyes we have recording our every move. They’re
more than our eyes and ears; they serve as the enforcer’s spies too.”

Cilreth
activated the attendants and sent them through the smallest lock on the Vovokan
ship, which was less than a meter on a side. Telisa continued the private part
of their conversation.

“I
haven’t really asked—”

“Yes,
I’ll go planetside with the team,” Cilreth said. “We don’t have an army
anymore. And this tin can ain’t the
Clacker
.”

“Thanks.”

“We’re
going to hit the jackpot and get whatever it takes to get Magnus back.”

Cilreth
meant it. She knew what it was like to find someone only to lose her.

The
probes hurtled down toward the planet. They were too small to have their own
gravity spinners, even with Vovokan technology, but since the
New Iridar
had a spinner, it did not have a high orbital speed. The attendants did not
have to lose much velocity relative to the surface below, so they would be able
to survive the atmospheric entry and take their places within the hour.

Cilreth
kept dropping the
New Iridar
’s scans into a team feed. The PIT team
would all be poring over the data. She received a request to access the data
from an entity she did not recognize.

Oh.
The battle sphere. Our big brother. Does it ask because it can’t snoop the
feed, or just to give the impression it can’t snoop the feed? Or to remind me
I’m at its service?

Cilreth
granted the access request, then dove into it herself.

Here
we go again. No doubt swarming with large predators waiting to take their turn
at me.
Her inner voice
was sarcastic but the thought still reflected a real fear.

Cilreth
saw similarities between the fifth planet’s composition and that of the core
planets inhabited by Terrans. Its gravity was relatively mild, and the surface
was relatively warm. It had water, but only covering thirty percent of the
surface. Billions of plants or plant-like creatures covered fifty percent of
its surface. Huge off-white spires rose from the ground, smooth and always
curved. They looked like giant ribs cutting out of the surface of the planet.
These long smooth ribs held complex webs of vine-like ropes holding aloft flat
organs that looked very similar to Terran plant leaves, though they were
larger, about a meter in diameter.

“Vines
on steroids?” Telisa summarized. “What could those pale things be? They’re over
30 meters tall.”

“We’ll
find out,” Cilreth said. “Maybe those are the Celarans.”

“The
ribs could be a symbiotic plant that helps hold them aloft. Or even an animal,”
Telisa said.

Glad
to see her mind is on the job. She’s back into it
, Cilreth thought. “The vines get big
too, really big. Over a meter in diameter in some places.”

“When
do we go down?” asked Caden over the network.

Cilreth
rolled her eyes. She wondered if the Blood Glades champ was already suiting up
somewhere.

Let
him get grabbed by some tentacled horror. That’ll put out his fire
, she thought.

“We
have less hardware this time, so we’re going to gather more information with
the probes. Then I’ll set up a TSG that duplicates the planet’s environment as
closely as we can. Maybe even a few of the real critters we learn about. We can
get used to what it’s like down there before we ever set foot on the planet.”

That’s
good. No need to go running around down there without some preparation. And
there’s no space force out to catch us this far from home. We may as well take
our time.

***

A
day later the PIT team had a much better picture of the planet below them.
Three ruin sites had been discovered by the Vovokan scanners. Telisa opened a
family of data panes in her personal view for each of the sites.

The
first and smallest of the sites was dominated by a thin tower rising over 360
meters from the surface. The tower was mostly naked support skeleton except a
building sat at the base and a platform rested on the top. The building’s
exterior shape was composed of many flat surfaces coming together at random
angles. The odd construction looked familiar. Several of their Vovokan
attendant spheres had converged on the site but no other buildings were visible
nearby. Nothing alive or automated had been spotted entering or leaving the
building.

There
may be underground areas we haven’t accessed yet
, Telisa thought.

Telisa
brought another pane in the family forward. Several native life forms had been
observed moving through the forest around the tower. The pane displayed data
gathered about these creatures. Telisa flipped through a series of insect
analogues. The diversity of forms reminded Telisa of Terran insects. She saw
all shapes and colors. Then she went through a series of rodent-sized critters.
She saw a spiral-snake that could only corkscrew its way along a vine. The attendants
had spotted a froglike leaf-eater whose flat, wide mouth was specialized to
roll and swallow leaves larger than itself in one swallow. Telisa skipped
through a few more creatures, making sure there were no signs of tech
accoutrements that could indicate intelligence. She got to the largest
creature.

The
largest one is likely to be the most dangerous predator, isn’t it? Or is that a
flawed assumption? The exceptions would include very poisonous creatures, I
guess. Poisons which hopefully are not effective on Terran metabolisms.

Telisa
saw a meter-long thing hanging from one of the thinner vine branches. It was
flat like an eel’s tail or a huge leech. The vine sagged under its weight even
in the light gravity. It hung from three skeletal fingers on one end. Telisa
spotted three more fingers on its opposite end. She decided the top was
symmetrical to the bottom, so it could probably hang from the other fingers
just as easily. Its coloration was actually pretty if one ignored the shape of
it. A hundred or so chevrons ran across its width on both sides of its black
body. The chevrons shimmered between bright colors.

Pretty,
yet creepy. Those fingers look too much like super-long Terran fingers. But it
doesn’t look dangerous from an objective physical analysis. Those fingers are
better than huge jaws filled with sharp teeth, or an acid-belching living
carpet.

Telisa’s
mind tried to recall what it had been like to be the flat creature on Chigran
Callnir. She railed against the mismatch of memories that did not fit her
current body. It was frustrating. She could remember it, yet she could not
remember the
feeling
of it. Like a memory of taste as experienced by
someone who had never tasted, the experiences were simply too alien.

Telisa
moved on to the other pane families. The next two ruins were larger. One was a
series of low buildings that had been overgrown by the native vines. The
buildings were the size of Terran houses set many meters above the surface,
within the vine canopy. Once again the angles were strange. She saw a lot of
hexagonal components, but they seemed mashed together with little reason.
Telisa realized they reminded her of the buildings in the space habitat the
team had visited.

Did
Shiny send us to a Blackvine colony? I got the impression these aliens had
reached a higher potential than we saw from that race. Though that space
habitat was nothing to sneeze at. Really surprising given the confusing clutter
we found inside.

Telisa
checked the output of the star to the radiation profile from the space habitat.
They did not match well, but this was not expected to be their native planet,
either. Maxsym had noted the light of the habitat was matched well to the
Blackvines. Or had he only been talking about the windows? She decided it was
too early to conclude the buildings were Blackvine. If they were, it should
become apparent when they arrived.

The
fauna analysis from the second site had spotted the same sorts of insect like
creatures. Though she saw a new creature or two, the main thing that caught her
eye was the existence of the meter long eel things with the colorful stripes.
Telisa did a quick check ahead: they were at all three sites.

A
dominant life form?

The
last ruins site was composed of much larger buildings. Telisa’s gut reaction to
it was that it must have been an industrial complex. About fourteen large
constructs rose to the equivalent of four or five Terran stories high. A hard
pavement cover had been put over the planet’s surface around the buildings.
Despite some cracks it had held up pretty well. The native vines had not
managed to make as much headway here as they had among the second ruin.

Telisa
immediately noticed that attendants had gone missing trying to investigate
these buildings.

Some
kind of automated defenses
,
Telisa surmised.
This is the most dangerous, but perhaps the most valuable
of the three sites. We’ll get warmed up on the others, but this is probably the
one with the greatest prizes.

Telisa
called for a face to face to discuss the data coming in. Everyone assembled
quickly; the
New Iridar
was so small there was no place anyone could be
that would take a long time to arrive.

“By
now I’m sure you’ve all taken a look,” Telisa opened. “We’re going down at the
smallest site. The tower site.”

“Any
ideas what the tower is for?” Siobhan asked.

“Theories
only. We’ll take a close look,” Telisa said.

“I
think it’s for aerial reconnaissance of the planet,” Cilreth said. “I think
when these aliens came here, they set up this tower to launch and maintain
their robots to fly over the planet and map part of it out in detail.”

“Easily
done from orbit, just as we’ve done,” said Imanol. “Why the up close?”

Cilreth
shook her head. “I don’t know. The same reason we sent down the probes I guess.
The vine canopy hides a lot. Maybe they needed the details. I would, if I were
setting up a colony.”

“They
needed to collect something from the surface,” Caden guessed. “It’s for finding
something, or harvesting things.”

“They
could have needed to see something coming. Something dangerous,” Siobhan said.
Everyone chewed on that for a moment.

“The
smaller house-type buildings remind me of the space habitat,” Caden said. “The
shapes are crazy.”

“Yes,
all those weird angles,” Siobhan agreed.

“The
attendants haven’t spotted any Blackvine boxes shuttling around,” Cilreth said.
“And I also checked for a Blackvine network. None are transmitting.”

Everyone’s
moving rapidly ahead on their own initiative. It’s a great team. If we had
Magnus...

“So
the similarity struck you, too?” asked Imanol.

“Yes,”
Cilreth admitted.

“It’s
not clear,” Telisa said. “If there’s a connection, we’ll find it.”

“Another
interesting question is, which came first? The big buildings, the tiny houses,
or the tower?” Siobhan asked.

“Don’t
assume they’re houses,” Telisa said. “Though I agree with that assessment as a
first guess.”

“Well,
I think the big buildings show more signs of wear, so they may have been
first,” Cilreth said. “I don’t understand why they’re not all together. Three
very different types of structures, isolated from each other. They’re not
really in three different climate zones. So why the separation?”

“What
are we calling these aliens? The ones who made the ruins,” asked Caden.

“Blackvines,
if that’s what they are,” Imanol said. “Otherwise, Idricks or Pipers. Or do you
prefer Idrickians?”