The Celaran Solution (Parker Interstellar Travels Book 9)

  The Celaran Solution

  (Book 9 of the PIT Series)

  by Michael McCloskey

  Copyright 2017 Michael McCloskey

  ISBN: 978-0991052493

  Learn more about Michael McCloskey’s works at

  www.squidlord.com

  Cover art by Stephan Martiniere

  Edited by Stephen ‘Shoe’ Shoemaker

  Special thanks to Maarten Hofman and Wesley Twombly

  Chapter 1

  The interior of the new Iridar—Telisa had lost track of how many of them there had been so far—gleamed. Of course, it felt different than the Vovokan ship they had lost. Most of all, it smelled different, she decided. The UNSF ship had been designed as a commando insertion and extraction vessel: it was small and maneuverable, yet with relatively high crew capacity.

  Telisa sat beside Magnus in the mess hall. Caden, Siobhan, and Marcant sat across from them while Lee and Cynan hovered nearby.

  “Good to be back in a real Terran ship, right?” Caden said cheerfully.

  “Eh, it’s kind of clunky,” Magnus said.

  “The gravity spinner is better than any Terran one I’ve seen,” Siobhan commented.

  “Yes. Shiny’s been helping out the Space Force in a lot of areas. This spinner is strong and precise,” Telisa said.

  The Iridar had just set out for the Celaran homeworld. The experienced PIT team members knew the drill—it was time to talk about how to allocate their time during the trip. Even though the voyages afforded some rest and relaxation, it was also the best time to perform their rigorous VR training.

  Telisa started with the obvious.

  “Cynan has decided to come with us. He’ll be valuable in making some kind of connection with any group of cyborg Celarans we might find.”

  “Is that likely?” Caden asked.

  “Optimistically, yes,” Telisa said. “If we find more Destroyers instead, then we’ll run away and search elsewhere. Lee and Cynan have a list of star systems that other Celarans may have fled to.”

  Everyone seemed to like that idea, so Telisa moved on.

  “I’m happy to announce that Lee has been officially accepted into the PIT team.”

  I said officially and PIT in the same sentence. Ha.

  The Terrans clapped while Lee flitted about energetically and flickered her chevrons.

  “Thank you!” she said on the channel.

  Telisa let Lee enjoy that for a moment, then moved to the next item on her agenda.

  “I said we would rely more on stealth this time out, and I meant it. We need to change our equipment to reflect that. We have our Celaran cloaking spheres now, and they can absorb a lot of sound, but projectile weapons are too noisy.”

  Telisa stood and walked around the table as she continued. “I think our main weapons should be lasers. If you want to keep a backup projectile weapon, that’s fine... we never know when those might prove more effective. I’m carrying an edged weapon, laser pistol, breaker claw, and cloaking sphere. I suggest you do the same.”

  Everyone mulled that over.

  “Any other ideas for equipment changes based on the new approach?” Telisa asked.

  “We should all be in stealth suits for redundancy,” suggested Siobhan. “They could hide us if the spheres get damaged or run low on power.”

  “Hold on there,” Magnus said. “I’m giving up my rifle already. Now you want me to give up my Momma Veer?”

  Telisa laughed out loud.

  By the Five, that felt good.

  “Sounds like a good idea, but I’ll leave it voluntary,” Telisa said.

  Lee seemed to finally calm down from the announcement about her and grabbed a rod to hang from. Just for fun, Telisa hopped up and grabbed an adjacent hang line, then whipped her feet up and over it so she could hang from behind her knees. She dangled upside down next to Lee.

  “I’ve never seen you do that!” exclaimed Lee.

  “There are tree climbers among our ancestors,” Telisa told her playfully. “We weren’t always tromping around in the mud.”

  Lee glowed again, but no speech came through on the channel.

  She must have found that funny. Or did she send a private comment to Cynan?

  The Celaran cyborg floated idly the whole time. Cynan had no nervous energy to burn like the other Celarans Telisa had observed. She wondered if the cyborgs were usually very old when they decided to get augmented bodies.

  “We have a good supply of attendants,” Telisa said. “Remember, though, it can be tricky to divide them between intra- and extra-cloaking envelope duties. Moving them in and out of the envelope can give you away.”

  “Three attendants works well in the simulations,” said Caden. “One to move ahead and scout around, two to stay cloaked with you.”

  Telisa nodded. It felt strange to nod while upside down. The blood was not rushing to her head; yet another superiority of a Trilisk host body.

  “Are Adair and Achaius in the battle spheres?” asked Caden.

  Marcant cleared his throat.

  “They’re in control of the battle spheres, but Adair and Achaius have merged their cores with attendants,” Marcant said. “In fact, these two right here,” he said, indicating the spheres that hovered on-station near his head.

  “Come up with a few configurations, and we’ll test and practice in VR,” Telisa said. “Cynan is going to construct two types of environments we can add to our training regimen: one for the projected condition of Celara, and another that contains a Celaran space station.”

  “What are they like, roughly speaking?” asked Caden.

  “Cynan will send you a peek when they’re ready. I imagine the space station would be very similar to the one that had been taken over by Blackvines: dwellings floating in wide open spaces.”

  “Correct. The homeworld should have similarities to the healthy planet we left,” Cynan said. “It has support spikes and vines, though the vines were reddish and sickly when we abandoned it. The vegetative mass is greatly reduced overall. Some areas may be devoid of vines altogether.”

  Lee flashed in distress. Her serpentine body drooped, losing its curl.

  Many of her physical cues to mood are easy to identify, Telisa thought.

  “Okay, two shifts of three are your own,” she announced. “The third shift is for training. I’ll identify which ones everybody should be involved in. Otherwise, go ahead and group up however it shakes out each day, but be sure to mix it up sometimes. Improve your worst matchups.”

  Telisa looked at Marcant and thought that Adair and Achaius should probably rotate in with everyone else. She made a note to mention it to him privately.

  That makes nine of us. Can I get everyone through this expedition alive?

  “Okay, that’s it for now. Magnus and I would like to stay and speak privately with Cynan and Lee,” she said.

  Too mysterious.

  “I’m going to sync with them about the Shiny situation,” she clarified.

  Caden and Siobhan stood together and nodded to Telisa, then walked out. Marcant moved more slowly, but he did not linger. Telisa waited until they had all left.

  “Shiny is the first living alien Terrans ever encountered,” Telisa started. “We worked together with him to escape a Trilisk complex that had trapped us. We soon learned that his behavior was more dangerous than we had anticipated.”

  Lee dropped from the perch and started to glide around the room. “Dangerous? He protects your home planet, doesn’t he?”

  “We think it’s only because it’s best for him. He has on several occasions taken over everythin
g whether we were comfortable with it or not. The Vovokans were a loose collection of warlords before the Quarus war, and to him, cooperation is known, but never sticky. He can quickly switch to ‘competition mode’ and that means he might do anything—even kill us—if that became his best move.”

  “Our planets could be in danger,” Cynan concluded. “Shiny could hurt Earth, or he could hurt our colony planet.”

  “The strange thing is, Earth doesn’t care. He’s taken over there, and everyone’s happier than ever before. We don’t know if it’s because he really is doing a great job, or if there’s also some subtle way that he’s using the Trilisk technology to influence public opinion.”

  “We hang from the same branch now, but I feel an urge to warn other Celarans of the danger,” Cynan said.

  “Yes. I knew that telling you would mean telling other Celarans,” Telisa said. “I felt you had to know the truth, and yet, at the same time, these are only our fears, the PIT team’s fears. You should come to your own conclusions. I beg you to be cautious, that’s all. Lean on Shiny, for now, to rebuild your civilization. Just know that the day may come when you can’t lean on him anymore.”

  Chapter 2

  Celara Palnod was a planet ten percent less massive than Earth. Marcant did not need the many advanced sensors of the Iridar to tell him this planet had seen a catastrophe. A quick glance at the magnified video feed told him that. Roiling clouds of gray ash obscured a fourth of its surface. The rest was a combination of ocean blue and mottled red-brown land masses.

  Marcant pored over the readings coming in. Telisa had asked him to summarize the planetary scans for the team, a responsibility that had likely come to him because of the loss of Cilreth.

  No doubt everyone already knew they had arrived and would be preparing themselves for action.

  What will they want to know first?

  “The Celaran population,” suggested Adair. “I’ll devise a counting method.”

  “Thank you,” Marcant said. “I think we also need an analysis of—”

  “The vine cover, yes,” Achaius said. “I suppose you want me to do that.”

  Marcant smiled. That was Achaius’s way of offering help while pretending to be above it all.

  “Most helpful, Achaius,” Marcant said. “I’ll turn my attention outward, then,” he said.

  Telisa made a private connection to Marcant.

  “Marcant, since you’re gathering data on the planet, I’ll concentrate on spotting any alien ships or stations in the system,” Telisa said.

  “Good. Thank you,” Marcant said. “We should have a preliminary report in ten or twenty more minutes.”

  What does that leave me? Hrm. How about Celaran buildings and infrastructure?

  Marcant focused on artificial constructs detected on the planet. They had lost a lot of data when the last Iridar crashed and burned, but the new ship had been at the colony and it knew how to spot Celaran buildings. Marcant used those signatures to find the same kinds of structures below. The countless damaged buildings registered as partial matches; Marcant trained the processes that analyzed the scanner data to recognize buildings that had been heavily damaged, then continued until it could see even the smoldering foundations.

  The analyzer then grouped every Celaran structure it saw into various states of damage. Marcant watched the information aggregate. The vast majority of the Celaran signature hits piled up in the categories for destroyed structures.

  The planet has been crushed. Less than one percent of the buildings are left intact.

  Marcant checked on his friends’ findings.

  The vine data was still being collected, but so far, it was staying below one percent of the norm for the other Celaran planets they had visited.

  Marcant looked at a distribution of the healthy vines and investigated the peak points. The planetary map spun in his PV, highlighting each in turn. He saw small areas on islands and plateaus where the vines were healthy.

  These will be good places to visit.

  He then turned his attention to Adair’s population counting. Instead of one count, he found many and realized in another few seconds that Adair was counting many different life forms. Adair must have sensed his reads of the data.

  “There are some oddities here,” Adair said. “I think the feral flyers, the smaller ones, mostly died out. That makes sense given the global loss of vegetation. But I do see a larger form of fauna, very similar to Celarans.”

  Marcant viewed several images of the creatures taken from above. They were larger than any Celaran he had seen, an average of a meter longer with a much wider shape.

  Marcant decided to seek out help before sending out the initial report.

  “Lee, Cynan, are these native animals?”

  He sent pointers out to the Celarans. As he expected, Cynan reacted quickly.

  “Those are unfamiliar. They are... very similar to us.”

  “They’re flying higher than I would normally,” Lee added. “These data suggest not only a different appearance but very different behavior.”

  Marcant saw that there were millions of the creatures gliding high above the planet’s surface.

  “Telisa will want to investigate. Tag the map with any large concentrations of these,” Marcant said to Adair.

  “There are no large concentrations, but they do tend to glide in flocks,” Adair said. “I’ll make note of the most accessible groups.”

  “Here, can you choose some close to these areas with surviving vines? We can reduce the amount of travel we’ll have to do.”

  “Sure.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Marcant, what do you have for us?” Telisa sent from elsewhere on the ship.

  “Do you want to help me report the findings?” Marcant asked Adair and Achaius.

  “No way,” Achaius said. “That’s what we keep you around for.”

  “Yes, our jelly-brain ambassador,” Adair said.

  Marcant nodded, even though no one was looking. He gathered his thoughts and brought up a summary pane in his personal view. Then he opened a connection to the team channel.

  “There are Celarans down there,” Marcant announced. “The numbers are small... maybe twenty million of them.”

  “That must be a pitiful number,” Adair said privately to Marcant and Achaius. “Surely there were millions more before the attack.”

  Marcant continued with the delivery of grim news.

  “The vine mass is less than one percent of the colony planet we left. As expected, it’s mostly unhealthy.”

  “Mostly?” Telisa prompted.

  “I see a handful of... oases. Mostly on islands and other geographically isolated spots.” He cross-indexed the locations with the Celaran populations and found a correlation. “There are concentrations of Celarans there, where the food is.”

  “Survivors,” Caden said.

  “I wonder if the Quarus will come back to annihilate the rest,” Siobhan said.

  “As you would expect from all this, the industrial and technological state of the planet is grave. I believe the Destroyers must have struck at all the major population centers early on. What buildings remain are scattered.”

  No one commented, so Marcant continued. “I read small amounts of radio usage, widely scattered. No active gravity spinners detected, though we do know that the Celarans are capable of hiding that. It may be that there are other Celaran hideouts that still have advanced technology operating.”

  He pointed the team at the information Adair had collected about the wide Celaran-like creatures.

  “Here is an oddity that feels important. Lee and Cynan say these creatures are not native to Celara Palnod, though they clearly look similar to Celarans. There are millions of them on the planet.”

  “Could they be the result of a mutagenic poison?” Siobhan asked suddenly.

  Marcant smiled. He did not think so—but decided to let Cynan answer.

  “Highly unlikely,” Cynan said. “My only t
heory is that they’re Celarans who’ve been intentionally modified to survive the new environment.”

  That makes sense, but didn’t they have other recourses?

  “Would Terrans morph themselves before they would simply move to a different planet?” asked Caden, clearly thinking along the same lines as Marcant.

  “And aren’t Celarans even more likely to run than Terrans?” asked Siobhan.

  “Celarans are not all like me and those on my vine,” Lee said. “It’s also possible that there are no means of escape left. Modifying bodies would have been easy, as long as facilities remained to do so. The refugees may have had no other vine to choose.”

  “Continue to gather information,” Telisa said. “Come up with a list of sites to investigate.”

  “To make contact?” Marcant asked.

  “Not immediately. We only want to observe for now,” Telisa said. “Siobhan and Caden. You’re up first.”

  Marcant was not surprised. Those two would see taking point as an exciting opportunity. He was glad he would not be going first.

  “Maybe I’m finally getting through to you, jelly-brain,” Adair said to Marcant approvingly.

  “Is there any good news?” Telisa asked with a sigh.

  “No Trilisk activity detected,” Marcant said.

  “Good. I saw no signs of spacecraft or space stations, Celaran, Quarus, or otherwise,” Telisa said.

  “If there are spacecraft, they would be cloaked,” Cynan pointed out.

  “Would we see them?” Telisa asked.

  “Hrm. Probably not. Not with this ship,” Marcant said. “We should have taken a Celaran ship. Or at least, brought one.”

  “Yes I agree, this is suboptimal,” Achaius said.

  “The Celarans might well have refused to send one anyway,” Adair said. “They needed every last ship just to survive.”

  “The Space Force is there now,” Achaius pointed out.

  “Would you trust the alien fleet to protect you when your whole civilization is at risk?”

  “I would not.”

  “Then why are we arguing?” Adair asked.

  “Yes, why?” Marcant inquired of both of them.