The Celaran Solution (Parker Interstellar Travels Book 9) Read online

  “So you’re imagining the same thing I am: we’re going to enter through holes boiling water off into space, while who knows what is shooting at us.”

  Telisa grabbed a combo laser-projectile PAW and loaded it with water rounds. She took some grenades and they headed for the assault bays on the belly of the ship. Within a couple of minutes, they arrived at a lock door and paused. Vibrations ran through the deck.

  “We’re opening the doors,” Marcant said.

  Magnus waited. He felt uncomfortable, but could not quite figure out why for a moment.

  “I know you feel the need to help our team, but maybe we should stand this one out,” Magnus said.

  “Why?” Telisa asked. “It’s not like you to get cold feet.”

  “Those Cyleran battle machines must each be worth a hundred of me, and at least ten of you as a host body. The same goes for the Vovokan battle spheres. I’m not sure we’re going to do anything except make targets of ourselves out there.”

  “Well I wasn’t planning on leading the charge. Even the Space Force follows up the machines with the marines, right? Machines are first-in, first-out.”

  “There’s also the Pirate’s Option,” Magnus reminded her. “This base may be going out with a bang. We could be stuck.”

  “I hear you. I wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t have team members over there. We have to get them back.”

  Magnus nodded. At least if he died, he figured Shiny had plenty of copies of him out there somewhere.

  “We have the Cyleran assault machines aboard,” Marcant said. “They’re waiting with the Vovokan battle spheres.”

  Magnus checked the lock with his link. The bay had pressurized on the other side. They walked through together.

  Massive Cylerans waited in a clean white room 50 meters across. Each of the alien cyborgs was the size of a Terran land vehicle. Magnus spotted the Vovokan battle machines in the back.

  “Thank you all for helping us save our trapped friends,” Telisa transmitted.

  Magnus was about to say that Cynan may not have equipped them with Terran link protocols when one answered.

  “It is us who welcome your assistance protecting the vine. The Screamers must be stopped.”

  The assault bay offered Telisa and Magnus space exoskeletons. Magnus accepted the service through his link. A white panel opened from the wall behind them.

  “What’s this? For space operations?” Telisa asked.

  “Yes. We want these. It’ll be better than relying on our attendants to shuttle us around,” Magnus said.

  A pair of exoskeletons walked out of the panel. The frames quickly adjusted size to fit each of them. Magnus had used the exoskeletons before; they were designed for space infantry, basically powered frames with rocket assist capability that would allow them to maneuver in space.

  Magnus accessed the tactical and watched the assault develop in his PV. He saw the PIT ships and seven Cyleran vessels approaching the stealthed Quarus base. Six of the Celaran vessels continued to accelerate. Their projected courses were on the tactical.

  “It looks like those Celaran ships are maneuvering for an attack pass,” Magnus said.

  “It makes sense. They’ll draw fire away from us and mix it up. Give us a chance to come in and attack at point blank range.”

  Magnus knew they took a huge risk. If the remoras failed to disable the Quarus ship, they would likely all be blown to bits by the base’s main weaponry. Magnus watched as the squadron of Cyleran ships started their run-by within weapons range, trying to draw fire from the Quarus base.

  The combat control summary from the bridge showed the Iridar had launched a spread of remoras to disable the target. A group of missiles launched from nearby Cyleran ships at the same time, mirroring their trajectory.

  “We don’t want to destroy the base!” Magnus sent on the team channel.

  “Diversions only, I’m assured,” Marcant said. “There’s a type of disabler missile of their own mixed in among that salvo, similar to our own remoras only more sophisticated.”

  Telisa and Magnus shuffled in place nervously as the battle unfolded. The Cyleran soldiers stoically remained motionless and silent. One of the Cyleran ships blossomed into a ball of energy, struck down by weapons unknown. Many of the Cyleran missiles also blinked out, presumably destroyed by Quarus point defenses. The remoras reached their target along with the remaining missiles and disappeared from the tactical.

  The Iridar crept closer and closer, slowing to meet the enemy.

  “I think they’re disabled or else we would already be hit. Identify any external weapons and take them out now,” Telisa said.

  Magnus remained silent, jaw clenched.

  Here we go. Just another day on the PIT team.

  The tactical had zoomed in as the Iridar approached, showing Magnus the appropriate level of detail. Now the tactical stopped changing its boundaries, which meant that they had come into position and stopped relative to the target. A second later, the bay lights went out and the assault bay doors opened. The Cyleran machines shot out into space within another second. The Vovokan spheres followed quickly, leaving Telisa and Magnus.

  “The heavies are out,” Telisa said. “We’ll join them within the minute.”

  Marcant sent back a nonverbal acknowledgment. Telisa activated her exoskeleton thrusters and headed slowly for the lock. Magnus stayed on her right.

  Magnus saw flashes in the darkness. The Cylerans and their assault ship traded shots with Quarus defenses. Nothing came their way for a second, then the Iridar started to fire into the base.

  We need to move before they return fire.

  Telisa, of like mind, accelerated away from the Iridar toward their target. Magnus felt helpless and exposed as he hurtled out into space with her. Even the lightest ship weapon could vaporize either of them at any moment. Magnus forced himself to let go of the fear. There was nothing to do now but complete the mission as best he could, or die trying.

  If I die, I die.

  He saw hull breaches in the surface of the roughly donut-shaped Celaran base. It was five times larger than the Iridar, but the Cylerans seemed to be winning, at least on the outside. A few spots on the target base glowed. Magnus zoomed in on one such spot and saw a cratered weapons emplacement. He refocused on the nearest hull breach. Telisa had already selected it as a destination.

  The sleek forms of Cyleran machines entered the hull breach. The Vovokan spheres cut their own breach into the ship and entered forty meters farther down the hull. Telisa and Magnus were still too far out, but they were closing rapidly.

  Magnus wondered if a combat Cyleran was as powerful as a Vovokan battle sphere.

  I guess the Vovokan machine would be deadlier, because the Celarans as a whole are so peaceful.

  Magnus turned to Telisa, but she charged after them with both suit thrusters. Magnus followed with a more measured pace. He could see gases escaping into space from the breaches.

  “The water isn’t helping us! Keep bleeding it off!” Telisa said.

  “There are robots outside repairing the breaches,” Marcant noted.

  “That means they’ve recovered from the remoras,” Magnus pointed out.

  “I’m not so sure. Those systems should be isolated and designed to work when the ship has taken critical damage,” Marcant said. “Of course, we can’t be certain since we don’t know the Quarus that well.”

  Magnus arrived at their breach behind Telisa. He jetted inside and landed on a partially melted deck. Blobs of water half the size of a Terran moved within the tunnel ahead, boiling into vapor in the vacuum. He followed Telisa into the alien ship against a storm of water and vapor. He felt the pull of artificial gravity drawing him toward a flat plane on this right. He oriented himself by deciding that direction was “down” and kept moving forward.

  He encountered a portal that was somehow retarding the outflow of water into space. Although he had no idea what sort of mechanism could do such a thing, it did not
surprise him that the Quarus used such technology. Magnus slammed into the water on the other side of the gateway. Telisa was a dim form swimming rapidly ahead.

  The water sloshed violently, coming up to his chest at the peaks. The atmosphere above the liquid was a dense fog. The water pulled Magnus left, then forward. He considered anchoring himself to something, but then he would be sacrificing mobility...

  A Cyleran slid up next to him, moving relatively effortlessly in the chaos. It was shaped like a thick, oversized Celaran with three long metal arms instead of three skeletal fingers.

  “Can you sense your friends?” it asked.

  Magnus saw them on his tactical. He felt a rush of excitement. Could the rescue actually succeed?

  “That way,” Magnus sent and pointed deeper into the base.

  The body of a cyborg next to him started to scintillate. At first, Magnus thought it was some kind of visual communication. Then he realized the Celaran was transforming. Its flat shape rounded into a cylinder as the arms on one end thickened and lengthened into a three-legged base to support it.

  The cylinder turned slightly, then the world flashed. Magnus’s suit visor protected his eyes from harm by blocking out part of his view. When it cleared a moment later, the bulkhead was gone. A wall of water poured out beneath a roiling cloud as the liquid boiled away in the low pressure.

  “That thing became a... breachmaker,” Magnus said on the team channel.

  One second it was a flying soldier, the next it had become something else. As Magnus watched, it changed again, taking a torpedo shape so that it could make progress against the water.

  “These soldiers are the natural next step in Celaran technology. Super multi-functionality. They can turn themselves into whatever they need,” Telisa said. Magnus could not see her in the chaos, but the tactical told him she was within ten meters of his position.

  “These bubbles are wreaking havoc with our lasers,” she said. “Projectiles aren’t much better. There’s only about half a meter of water vapor at the top of these rooms.”

  “Be careful of your weapons,” said a Cyleran. “Your friends are coming toward us.” The one he had been standing beside had already disappeared into the mist and water ahead.

  “We’re stuck with what we’ve got. I left my speargun at home,” Magnus told her.

  Magnus resolved to catch up to her. The gravity failed just after he pushed off. He splashed through more giant globules of water. He risked one short burst from his exoskeleton to shoot down a corridor and found Telisa covering there from something around a corner.

  “We’re almost there!”

  “Every second counts. They’ll be running out of oxygen!” he reminded her.

  Telisa and the nearest Cyleran leaped and flew through the water vapor ahead.

  Magnus clutched his laser, checked that his breaker claw was still at his belt, and floundered after them in the churning mixture of liquid and gas.

  Chapter 17

  Caden checked his oxygen monitor. He had only twenty minutes supply left. His suit was dealing with the carbon dioxide problem, but it was not equipped to liberate the oxygen from it.

  The team waited in the narrow space above their original arrival chamber. Their weapon lights provided a low level of illumination. Caden could see that the top quarter of the space had been discolored by the grenade, the boil-off, or perhaps the resulting breach repair. Siobhan and Telisa worked to put together a rough contraption to capture oxygen from a simple electrolysis setup. No one was stealthed, as they had decided to contribute their stealth spheres’ power to separating more oxygen.

  “That attendant got out. Now we have to survive until help can get here,” Siobhan said.

  Caden supposed she was simply trying to remain positive, but he had to point out his doubts.

  “Here? We aren’t on the planet anymore, remember?” Caden said.

  “Yes, and that’s a good thing. The Quarus can live in very deep water, but we haven’t been crushed because the interior of this place isn’t under high pressure,” Telisa9 said.

  “The interior is low pressure because it makes the ship safer and stronger. The hull has to contain the pressure against the vacuum outside,” Siobhan said.

  “Or the Quarus prefer to live close to the surface of the water. Maybe they went deep on the colony planet because they were hiding from us,” Telisa9 pointed out.

  “I meant we don’t know if the others can get here,” Caden said.

  “They can,” Telisa9 said. “They have two ships and most likely, they’re on their way.”

  “We’re running out of time,” Arakaki said. “Keep working on producing oxygen here. I’ll go kill another of these things and bring back the oxygen.”

  She’s so hardcore slickblack.

  “You’re staring again,” Siobhan said to Caden privately.

  “What? No. I’m only looking at her. You don’t complain when I look at Telisa.”

  “You were about to suggest you go with her,” Siobhan maintained.

  “I sorry if this hurts your feelings, but we have to survive somehow,” Caden said. “Forget about who’s looking at who and get some oxygen. We’re going to do the same.”

  Arakaki dropped off the inner bulkhead and submerged back into the original clear cage area. Caden did not know if Telisa9 had given her approval silently or if Arakaki had left anyway.

  “I’m useless here,” Caden said on the team channel. “I’m going to back her up.”

  Telisa9 looked like she was about to say ‘no’.

  “She has no breaker claw,” Caden said, taking out his own claw. “Her laser is going to be screwy underwater, and the projectile weapon—”

  Telisa9 nodded. “Go. Come back soon, with or without the oxygen. I’m sure we’re about to get at least another half hour’s worth.”

  I think she’s being optimistic.

  He nodded and slipped into the water smoothly. His mood calmed and he became the machine that had won the Blood Glades.

  Arakaki swam through the ragged hole in their clear-walled cage. Caden did a quick 360 check. Dim, cloudy water surrounded them. Caden supposed the earlier drilling and combat had probably polluted the water. He wondered why the ship had not cleaned it by now. Surely the Quarus had life support systems as the Terrans did? Did the aliens prefer their water like this?

  It’s a good thing. The cloudy water can conceal us now that we’re not stealthed.

  Arakaki chose a direction and swam on. Caden followed. She slipped past Quarus equipment and found a tall rectangular opening to a curved corridor.

  A current pushed at Caden as he joined Arakaki in the passageway.

  “It’s fighting us,” he sent her.

  “Would you rather it was sucking us in?” she asked.

  Hrm. Definitely not.

  “I’m thinking this current is like a conveyor. Makes it easier for them to move around in the ship,” she said. “If we’re going to hunt them, let’s move into the current and meet them head on. I don’t want any of them coming up behind us.”

  “Crazy. We’re hunting them, here in their ship.”

  “I have 17 minutes of oxygen left,” she said. It was answer enough.

  The corridor ended in another opening with vents above and below. The current came from the vents, or at least was encouraged by them. Arakaki held up a fist and knelt down. Caden let himself settle lower toward the floor.

  Arakaki grabbed the edge of a vent and pulled herself past its current. Once inside, she stood beside a tall alien machine or container, as if staying out of something’s sight. As Caden did the same, he saw her level her laser. She sent him her target sig. He did not take time to examine it, he just passed it to his breaker claw and hid behind a bank of gray equipment opposite her.

  Caden looked at the obstruction he hid behind. It might have been a series of shelves, but tubes of various sizes ran up and down through it. Very small tubes with a reddish tint might have been insulation for wires, b
ut he was not sure. Each shelf held bulbous metal objects whose function he could not guess. He peered through a gap between the nearest one at eye level and a support strut of the shelves and saw movement.

  One of the aliens worked across the chamber. Its four spider-legs supported the softer, tentacled center body. The long, armored legs made it seem huge, but Caden supposed that the creature might not mass that much more than a Terran. Caden heard a scratching noise come through the water and flinched. At first he thought he or Arakaki had scraped on something and given themselves away.

  “We kill it before it finishes whatever it’s doing,” she transmitted.

  The thing stopped working. It shifted its four long spider-legs.

  How could it hear that?

  Caden saw the legs each ended in a large pincer just like a Terran crab’s. He supposed that shape was helpful enough to have evolved on at least two worlds if not a thousand. He glanced upward. On the ceiling above them, he saw a small cigar-shaped machine dart back behind the top shelf.

  “They’re watching us!” he warned Arakaki.

  Arakaki’s laser pistol fired. The creature across the chamber recoiled. Its four powerful legs quickly propelled its soft central mass toward the far side of the room. Caden saw it had something in the short tentacles around its body. Whatever the item was, it had an aperture which rose to point at Arakaki.

  Caden activated his breaker claw with the alien device as his target.

  A wall of force slammed into him. He felt his lungs wrench painfully along with spikes of pain from his eyes and ears.

  What the hell?

  His eyes hurt. He tried to focus, but all he saw was turbulent water filled with bubbles.

  “You busted that thing’s power ring, didn’t you?” Arakaki said. “All that power vaporized a bunch of water. You’re lucky the explosion wasn’t bigger or we would have been crushed.”

  It was just a tiny gun.

  “I feel like I was crushed,” Caden sent. He would not have been able to speak it, as his lungs felt damaged.

  Arakaki wasted no time. She swam out and dug into the mass of tentacles with her knife, sending the red fluid swirling into the water.