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

  ***

  “There’s something we need to talk about,” Telisa9 said. Telisa looked at her and nodded so she would continue. Telisa9 walked to one side, drawing her away from the main group in the mess.

  “We have a Trilisk column on our Iridar.”

  “What? Well—”

  “We don’t have control over it, Shiny does,” Telisa9 explained. “We use it for our brain state backups, that’s all.”

  “I’m surprised he would part with one and give it to your team.”

  “New development. He’s figured out how to create new columns using the AI.”

  “By the Five! He can do anything now.”

  “Anyway, I know Magnus and the others are in there. But only Shiny can use it.”

  “And he’ll only do that if you bring him something good.”

  “The Talosian expedition was a wash,” Telisa9 said. “I think that civilization went dark aeons ago. There isn’t much left. I wonder if they were wiped out suddenly and utterly. Bottom line, no great tech to learn from, no answers. Just very old ruins.”

  “So you decided to come to this place,” Telisa finished.

  “Do you have anything that would convince Shiny to make another Magnus? Do you have any tachyon communications set up?”

  “No. Well, not yet. We’re looking for more Celaran allies.”

  “Then I don’t know what to do,” Telisa9 said.

  Have I ever looked that sad and broken? Telisa asked herself. Maybe, but only in front of Magnus.

  “If only we could control that column. Our software expert, Marcant, managed to gain control of two Vovokan battle spheres. But I can’t imagine he will able to do the same with a Trilisk column.”

  Telisa9 nodded. “There’s a possibility that the real columns contain the consciousnesses of Trilisks. Some of the columns, at least.”

  “You mean backups?”

  “No, I mean active beings. Not necessarily awake or paying attention to the... ‘real’ world, though.”

  “Wow.”

  Telisa thought about the columns she had seen. The first group had been on T2. Had there been real Trilisks watching her even then? Or were the aliens so busy doing something else that they had not even noticed her?

  “Maybe some of the Trilisks aren’t against us,” Telisa said. “Maybe they helped in ways I’m not even aware of.”

  Telisa9 tried to smile. “You still have the old optimism.”

  “How did you lose yours?”

  “First Shiny betrayed us all. We had a fruitless mission, and then on the way back, Magnus turned. When the bad things cluster, you see how little control you have over anything.”

  “Hang in there. We’ll get you patched up.” It felt strange to say to herself, but it fit.

  “Seeing Magnus is freaking me out,” Telisa9 admitted. “Half of me wants to hug him and half of me wants to shoot him.”

  “This Magnus is not a host body, so choose the former.”

  ***

  Caden and Siobhan retreated to his quarters after talking to the remnants of the other PIT team for an hour. Eventually, they could not tolerate Maxsym’s inexhaustible curiosity, but left Lee to it, since she seemed happy to answer his every question. Meeting the other team had been a strange experience, but Caden decided they would be better off to have more highly skilled people on their side.

  “You’re still all messed up about Arakaki,” Siobhan said.

  Oh, no. Here we go...

  “No, you’re messed up about her,” Caden replied.

  “When she’s in the room, you stand straighter and stop talking to me on our private channel,” Siobhan said.

  “I...” Caden’s voice trailed off. “Yeah, it feels weird. But I never slept with her. So don’t act like she’s some old flame, okay?”

  “If I was your second choice—”

  “Not at all! You know what we have is special.”

  “Then what’s your deal with her?” Siobhan asked. “Don’t sugarcoat it.”

  “I admired her skill. And I was so surprised to find out I could work with a soldier from the UED! They were the bad guys, the enemies of the Space Force. When I was a kid, we would play VR games all the time with everyone split into two sides: UNSF and UED.”

  “Go on.”

  “She really opened my eyes. I had been so Space Force centric. Telisa and the PIT team started me thinking about my blind loyalty to the UNSF. I had doubts about this job, you know? Until I saw Arakaki and how she cooperated with us for the greater good. Now, it’s just strange because she died to save my life, but today, there she was, standing around like her death was just a VR exercise.”

  “She’s just another copy,” Siobhan said.

  “Same woman, though.”

  “Okay. You get to work with her again. We can both learn from her. Just stop making it weird, okay? Get over it.”

  “I will. I have.”

  Caden’s eyes slid away from Siobhan, and he forced himself to accept the weird nervousness in his gut.

  I am so not over it.

  ***

  After the excitement died down, Magnus remained with Telisa in the mess. Arakaki and Telisa9 had returned to their ship after catching up with Caden and Siobhan. Eventually Maxsym had left as well, speaking of his plans examine their data on Celaran physiology.

  Caden had been acting weird, but Magnus figured the young VR champ would work through it. He wondered if Caden and the last Arakaki had hooked up before her untimely death. Did they share memory of that? It would be enough to make things awkward.

  I’m sure Siobhan noted it, too, he thought. Ah, young drama.

  Still, the meeting had brightened the mood on both teams, though clearly the magnitude of the information hitting the other PIT team had sent them for a loop.

  “These two teams need each other. We each replace missing pieces of the other, except for me. There are two of me,” Telisa said.

  “Telisa, you don’t have to take them on,” Magnus said.

  “Yes, we do. They also have a Vovokan ship. We need that ship, too. The other Telisa and I will figure this out. We’ll make it work.”

  “How? It’s going to be—”

  “We made it work for Cilreth. Besides, Terrans need to get used to this technology. The UN government is gone, at least in the Sol System. This is going to happen.”

  “I’m sure Shiny will keep that on lockdown for his own use,” Magnus said. “It’s another edge he’ll be happy to have over the competition.”

  “We’ll see what we can do about that.”

  Magnus placed his hand on the edge of the sleep web and started to slip in. Telisa grabbed him by the arm and held fast.

  What’s this?

  “I told her you’d visit her,” Telisa said. “These are her quarters over on their Iridar.”

  She sent Magnus a pointer to the ship map Telisa9 had shared with her.

  Uhm. I guess Caden and Arakaki don’t have the market cornered on drama.

  “‘Visit’?” he echoed.

  “You know.”

  “I have a say in this, too,” Magnus said.

  “Get in there and sleep with me. That’s an order,” Telisa said in a playful voice.

  Magnus tilted his head and looked skeptical.

  “Yes, really,” Telisa said more softly. “Today it will feel strange, tomorrow—well, next week, anyway—it will be the new normal. That’s how it was with Cilreth’s copy.”

  “I never got that used to it.”

  “I know myself. This is temporary. She’ll go back to Earth when she gets the chance and have Shiny make her a new Magnus from that column.”

  “Then she could wait—”

  “Don’t be cruel. Try to shut down any guilt reaction she has. Please, don’t pretend like this favor I’m asking is unpleasant.”

  Magnus opened his mouth, expecting another protest to emerge, but he found he had no argument to offer. Instead, he just exhaled and accepted it.

 
; “I’ll see you later,” he said.

  Magnus accessed the map and slowly walked out.

  Okay, that was a first.

  Chapter 8

  Maxsym felt very satisfied with the current mission. He enjoyed sneaking around, spying on new lifeforms, and snatching a sample here and there. On top of that, for every sample they collected, he could spend dozens of hours scanning the molecules and setting up the analyses to show how they worked.

  He could clearly remember his first mission with the PIT team on the space habitat. After that, he knew that events had occurred for which he had no memories. Eventually, he had been assigned to a PIT team and sent out again.

  The last mission had not provided much stimulation. There were a few tiny bits of alien flora and fauna to learn from, but they had all been simple things. Most of his time over the last three months had been spent trying to understand the wonder that was a Trilisk host body. For all his work, he had only managed to comprehend a few short splices which might have been the primitives of the most sophisticated dynamic genome imaginable.

  Maxsym’s latest analysis of the high-altitude Celaran forms had been loaded into his simulators. The genetic differences were very clean and localized. Clearly the result of external design, and yet the biggest of the splices had already been seen.

  “Curiouser and curiouser,” Maxsym said aloud in his Vovokan lab. He brought up a pane in his PV about the familiar segment that had been introduced into the larger Celarans.

  Ah, yes. This makes sense. I should report this immediately.

  “Telisa?” he sent. Then he realized he had connected with his Telisa.

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve finished my analysis of the samples taken from the large specimens,” Maxsym said.

  “The wide ones? What have you learned? Wait. Let me get my copy in the loop.”

  Maxsym saw that the other Telisa joined the channel.

  Strange days...

  A second later, Caden and Siobhan connected. Maxsym gave anyone else who might have been notified a few more seconds to join, then decided to start.

  “These creatures’ genetics are determined by a four-branched tree of long strands of—”

  “Four? Does that explain why their young are the product of genetic information from two, three, or four parents?” asked Telisa.

  “What?” Maxsym gasped.

  “I may have forgotten to mention that,” Telisa said apologetically.

  “Yes, that explains a lot,” Maxsym said and halted to think.

  “I’m sorry. Please tell us what you learned.”

  Maxsym took a deep breath.

  “I see evidence of genetic manipulation in both our ‘normal’ Celarans and these larger ones. In summary, my theory is that the Quarus poisoned the vines, so the Celarans moved some of the vine processes into their own bodies. This large subspecies is producing the same sap provided by the vines within their bodies.”

  “Photosynthesis?” asked Telisa9.

  “An equivalent chemical ladder,” Maxsym said. “Their increased size is critical. They need to gather water vapor from the clouds and then catch a larger cross section of starlight to produce what they need. These Celarans were designed to survive here.”

  “That’s amazing. In fact, too amazing. Wouldn’t it have been easier to fix the vines instead? Create a version that’s immune to the poison, or filters it out?” asked Caden.

  “Maybe it’s one of several parallel lines of research,” Siobhan said. “The oases might be the result of new types of vines that were designed. If your entire race is dying, you don’t put all your hope into one fix, right?”

  “Also, some of the spacefarers fled,” Magnus said. “Groups like Cynan’s cyborg mixes. Others stayed. They used multiple strategies to survive.”

  “So this is one solution. Apparently a relatively successful one. They’ve adapted to the changes in their homeworld.”

  “This group, anyway,” Maxsym agreed. “Remember, this group is only large compared to those that stayed here. I hope, for their sakes, that the majority managed to flee the planet.”

  “The solution will be short-lived if the Destroyers come back to finish the job,” Magnus said. “I hope the Quarus only wanted to knock the Celarans down until they weren’t seen as a threat.”

  “What kind of race could see the Celarans as a threat?” Siobhan asked.

  “It doesn’t matter. We’ll take the war to the Quarus, if we can. In the meantime, the Celarans can decide if they want to leave their homeworld and join the Space Force on the new colony,” Telisa said.

  “How?” asked Maxsym. “As advanced as the genetics of these amazing creatures are, they seem to live primitive lives now. I doubt they can help fight the Quarus.”

  “Yes,” Telisa agreed. “First, we need to verify that the anomalous site Magnus found is Trilisk.”

  “Oh, no. That’s the worst thing we could do!” Maxsym blurted. As soon as he said it, he felt embarrassed at the obvious fear in his voice.

  “Easy, Maxsym,” Telisa said. “I’m not going anywhere near that place.”

  Maxsym nodded. He relaxed a little.

  “Still... we need to put our Trilisk protections on high priority. We need to work together to improve our measures in case I become a mind slave.”

  “I’ll see what I can come up with,” Maxsym said.

  And whatever I devise will be my secret, so that a Trilisk wouldn’t find out from you.

  Chapter 9

  Arakaki chewed on the sliver of her ex’s armor. It was not the original, but neither was she, so it did not bother her. The new unified team had just finished a round of training, and Arakaki found herself alone in her quarters. She did not feel like sleeping, so she listened in on the team channel.

  “It’s definitely a Trilisk facility,” said the stranger named Marcant.

  At first she was not sure what he referred to exactly, but she saw a location get updated on the planetary map in her PV. She zoomed in and saw an unusual vine formation on the surface. Not only were the vines healthy there, they had grown into unusual geometric patterns that reminded her of a primitive temple. A lot of data had been attached to it, including a dozen attendant missions, yet nothing had managed to gain much data on the inside of the place.

  “As we suspected. Thanks for the verification. That means I’m out,” the host Telisa said. “We all know it’s too dangerous for me to go anywhere near there.”

  Arakaki checked again for Trilisk emissions in the Iridar. She suspected the rest of the team was doing the same.

  “I can go,” Telisa9 said. “You could take a team to investigate another promising site.”

  Arakaki’s mouth compressed into a thin line.

  Trilisks.

  She remembered all too well what had happened when their Magnus had become compromised. He had torn through the team leaving death in his wake before Arakaki had dropped him with a bullet through the back of his skull.

  How many more Terran soldiers are going to die from those damn demons? We should have been fighting them instead of ourselves.

  “Magnus, Lee, Cynan and I will check out a promising oasis,” Telisa said. “We’ll find out if any of them know about the factions we’re searching for. The normal Telisa, Siobhan, Caden and Arakaki are on the Trilisk site. If this planet has an AI... that could be huge.”

  “Another trinket for Shiny?” Arakaki sent to Telisa directly. She did not try to keep the venom from her voice. The link message would convey her emotive content perfectly, unless Telisa had filtered it out.

  “It’s time we took one for ourselves,” Telisa replied. “It’s the only way we could ever hope to oppose him.”

  This one is not broken like my Telisa. She’s ready to fight back.

  Arakaki tried to evaluate how she felt about that. Was she doomed to forever fight a losing battle against the rulers of Earth? First Terran and now alien? She chomped on the fragment in her mouth.

  It doesn�
��t matter. I’m going to keep fighting. There’s nothing else for me to do...

  Meeting the fragments of the other PIT team had gone over smoothly for her. There was a time when she had just wanted to die, at least as long as she could take the Konuan with her. Now, the prospect of living many lives brought mixed feelings. It seemed like maybe she would never die, which meant she would always feel the absence of her one real partner in life. On the other hand, her pain had finally started to fade. She was no longer fighting a losing war in an environment where she could only remember what she had lost. The enthusiasm of the PIT team invigorated her. She felt her zest for life returning.

  “Okay, get to it,” Telisa ordered.

  Arakaki accessed the data that many Terran and Vovokan machines had gathered on the mysterious location on the surface of Celara Palnod. The site was only a few square kilometers of land tucked away between two hills, but the vines grew so thickly there it reminded Arakaki of a jungle. The leaves were enormous, over a meter wide, and unlike the other regions she had seen, the flora here looked perfectly healthy. For the first time she was able to imagine what this planet must have looked like before: a lush paradise.

  Arakaki, Siobhan, Caden and Telisa9 grouped up on their own channel to confer on the new mission.

  “The vines here are abnormal,” Caden was saying as Arakaki connected.

  Arakaki saw only deep green, healthy looking vine branches and leaves from the first video feed she reviewed. She kept watching as they talked.

  “Not normal being not poisoned? So you mean abnormal for this planet?” asked Arakaki.

  “Here’s an analysis of the stems,” he said. A new pane became available in Arakaki’s PV. She focused her attention on it.

  A complex but regular pattern had been superimposed upon the view of the site. At first, she thought the lines represented an artificial structure under the vines. As the image rotated, it became clear that the regular lines were the vine branches themselves.

  “The vines are not growing randomly here,” Siobhan said.

  “Yes. This is a design,” Arakaki said.