Parker Interstellar Travels 6: The Celaran Ruins

The Celaran Ruins

by Michael McCloskey

Copyright 2014 Michael McCloskey

ISBN: 978-0991052424

Cover art by Howard Lyon

Chapter 1

The
Vovokan transport ship was only a little larger than the
Iridar
had
been. The mobile sand had been removed and replaced with a rubberized decking
more suitable for Terrans. The interfaces all understood Terran links and
provided the services they needed to operate in deep space. Though tiny
compared to the
Clacker
, the
New Iridar
was faster, better armed,
and stealthier than the original ex-UED scoutship that had taken Telisa to
Thespera. Once again Telisa lived in a quarters the size of a large closet. It
had no shower tube; everyone on board had to share the single shower that had
been installed where the sand cleaner had been.

What
difference does it make? It just serves to remind me even more of the fact I’m
a slave now.

Telisa
thought of her golden master for the thousandth time. Shiny had been a powerful
ally. Now he was a cold and distant overlord. Without him to rely on, the
mission ahead could be hard. She thought of the PIT team’s watchdog, a Vovokan
battle sphere the size of a small car sitting within their cargo hold. At the
moment it was content to wait there and ensure they went to the assigned world.
Telisa assumed it would emerge to monitor their progress once they had arrived.

I
have to get the pieces of the team back together again.

Shiny
had brought her Caden, Cilreth, Siobhan, Imanol and Jason. The alien told her
Cilreth2 and Maxsym had died in the
Clacker
when its shields gave way
under a salvo sent by Shiny’s other ships. Their advanced, luxurious ship was
gone. Not a single member of PIT had protested when Shiny told them they were
staying on the team. Perhaps they were all glad to go back out to the frontier,
far away from Shiny’s new empire. For some, like Caden and Telisa, there was
also the shame of being considered an enemy of mankind.

Telisa
walked out of her tiny quarters and headed for the galley’s lounge.

Imanol’s
tough enough to go on. Cilreth, too. Caden took it the worst but he has
Siobhan. Jason may be broken. He no longer worships us. But that could be a
good thing.

Telisa
arrived and met everyone at lunch time. Caden and Siobhan sat together on a
black piece of convertiture currently shaped like a couch. His arm was thrown
over her shoulders. Imanol sat alone, brooding as if angry, but Telisa
recognized it as his neutral state. Cilreth stood behind a counter looking over
their food. Telisa could tell her computer specialist had already taken a
morning dose of twitch. Jason stood on the other side of the room. He watched
Telisa carefully.

Cilreth
took note of her arrival.

“We’ve
been talking it over, Telisa,” Cilreth said. “We all think we should hang tough
with Shiny. If we all refuse to go without Magnus, he’ll have no choice but to
let him out of the Trilisk column to join us.”

Telisa
looked at them. She could see the whole crew in a wider spectrum than before,
thanks to her new eye. She flicked through infrared and ultraviolet views by
habit as she processed Cilreth’s speech. Everyone looked back at her
expectantly.

“That
means a lot to me,” Telisa said. “But I’ve been through this already. You see,
Shiny has control of the entire Sol system. He can send teams to every planet
he knows about without even sending us. He sent other teams when we came to
Earth to oust the Trilisks. We’re just one possibility to him. He knows us,
which is good, and he knows we have experience. He also knows if he gives us
Magnus, he might lose his hold over us.”

“There’s
no guarantee he’ll ever release Magnus,” Caden said. Siobhan leaned into him a
bit harder. The pair had been inseparable recently.

“What
are you going to do in the long run? Really work ten years and hope?” Imanol
asked.

“That
depends. Do watchdogs only watch their warehouse or do they listen too?” Telisa
asked.

Cilreth
processed that odd question, then she shook her head.

“I
don’t think we’re being listened to through the ship’s internal sensors,”
Cilreth said. “But the bottom line is, I can’t be sure. The battle sphere
probably has a mass sensor like Shiny, and it may be sensitive enough to see
our mouths moving and tell it what we’re saying. Speaking aloud is probably
less dangerous than sharing secrets over the links.”

Yes.
Shiny has proved beyond devilish when it comes to network infiltration and
obfuscation. I’m sure that was raised to a high art on Vovok.

“I’m
going to find more artifacts and get something to bargain with,” Telisa said
out loud. She let the edge of anger into her voice.
Or something to threaten
him with
, she thought. The tone of her voice made her hostile intent known
to the others.

“Just
let us know how to help,” Caden said.

Telisa
was glad Caden had decided to remain on the team. She knew he excelled at so
many skills she needed. He had taken the betrayal hard. He had gone from a
promising UNSF recruit to a traitor in the fiasco of their revolution.

“Keep
training. Get Jason up to speed. We’re going to be a notch more cautious this
time because we have less backup. We’ll scan the target planet for a few days,
re-create the environ for virtual training, and gather more clues before we set
foot on the ground. We’ll bring back enough to keep Shiny happy while we search
for anything that can get us leverage.”

“Do
we have any robots?” asked Imanol.

Telisa
shook her head. “Not really. Not like before. I have five of the old scouts. We
have over two dozen attendant spheres. As far as real automated firepower, it’s
only the
New Iridar
and our watchdog. Of course we still have our
rifles, pistols, swords, knives, and a case of glue grenades.”

“I
have a case of real grenades too,” Imanol added.

“Why
do old people always think glue grenades aren’t real grenades?” Jason asked.

Imanol
rolled his eyes. “It wasn’t always just stunners and shockers and nets and
glue, Mr. Salesman,” Imanol said. “Things were more serious before you core
worlders all went soft, and still are—”

“Out
on the frontier,” Caden finished for him.

Telisa
remembered her special alien weapon. It was lost, but she still had the
cloaking sphere and her breaker claw.

“Where
are we going?” asked Imanol.

“I’m
in the dark about most of it,” Telisa said. “We’re going to a place known by
Vovokans, ruins of a race other than the Trilisks. I know it’s a planet, not a
space habitat. Our mission is a lot like what we’ve done in the past:
investigate and pick up some alien technology to study and learn about.”

“Then
hand it over to Shiny,” Imanol said. The resentment in his voice expressed his
thoughts more honestly than his words.

“Let’s
see what we find, first, and what use we can make of it,” Telisa said. The
group ate lunch. Telisa took more than her share of food. Her amped body
screamed for more calories. She could survive on the amount they ate, but that
would curtail her energy. She saw Caden and Siobhan staring.

I’m
going to have to tell them I’m Telisa3 soon.

Telisa
decided she did not feel like telling them yet. She left to think it over.

For
now, they might think I’m catching up on calories from when I was paralyzed by
Magnus’s absence.

She
went to the cargo bay and set up a tool table as a workspace. She found it
inadequate compared to her old lab on the
Clacker
. Not the least of its
problems was the presence of a large battle sphere sitting a few meters away.
Amorphous green light played lazily across its black surface, though Telisa did
not know what the display meant. She did not talk to it.

Telisa
sighed. She decided to take care of some other necessary business she had been
putting off.

“Do
you have time?” Telisa asked through her link.

“Yes.
Let’s do it,” Cilreth sent back. Telisa left the watchdog alone with its
thoughts.

She
met Cilreth in a chamber set up as a sick bay for the transport ship. Cilreth
brought her over to a padded medical table. On a small tray, two thin gray
wafers sat inside clear sterile packs.

“You
checked these things out?”

“Eight
ways from extinction,” Cilreth said. “Still... I can only be so sure.”

Telisa
nodded.

Jason
had obtained upgraded links for Telisa and Cilreth before leaving Earth.
Telisa’s link had become dated while she was in hiding on the frontier. Also,
her new eye streamed in much more detailed visual scans than her natural one,
so it would be nice to have more optical bandwidth and storage. Her new link
had orders of magnitude more storage than her own brain. But Telisa’s main
motivation was to remove her current link in case Shiny or the Space Force had
tampered with it.

Jason’s
not a traitor, but if he was found by Core World Security..
.

If
they knew he had links and they had tampered with them, she would be back to
square one.

I
guess I’d rather be monitored by CWS than Shiny. For now.

Telisa
lay down on the table and deactivated her link. A hole opened in the table
below her head. A small robot unfolded from under the table and started to
examine her head with three scanner arms. Telisa knew the sensors and effectors
in her brain would remain behind. It was only the central module she wanted to
replace. It was a simple, common procedure. Telisa had had an upgrade swap done
two times before. She realized she was not at all nervous.

I
was scared last time I did this. Things have changed. This is a vacation
compared to what I’ve seen.

The
robot immobilized her head, zapped her local nerves, and drilled into the back
of her skull. Telisa waited. It seemed to take longer than she remembered.

“Hang
on. It’s almost done,” Cilreth said.

Some
snag?

The
robot kept working. A minute later, the link had been extracted. Cilreth fed in
the new link. The robot plugged the tiny wafer back into Telisa’s head. A
bonder sealed the hole in her skull close to its original strength for gradual
replacement with natural bone matter. She would have a scab on her scalp and
nothing more.

“How’s
it looking?” Cilreth asked.

Telisa
checked her services list and brought up a few of her internal monitors. She
shuffled a picture of Siobhan and Caden from her artificial eye’s memory to her
link.

“Basic
sanity check is working out,” Telisa said.

“Ready
to sync?” Cilreth asked. She spoke of Telisa’s old link. All its private
information remained to be moved to her new link.

“I’m
going to sleep on it,” Telisa said. “I can sync later.”

Cilreth
shook her head. “Brave words, woman. I wouldn’t be able to live without my data
for ten minutes.”

“It
could mean a lot,” Telisa said. “There’s some danger in it.”

Cilreth
shrugged. “If my stuff can’t detect any spy software there, then it may be
hopeless. If it’s that advanced, it may end up on your new link anyway. With
Shiny, it could even be a tiny hardware bug he put in your head.”

“Maybe,”
Telisa said. Her tone said she was not buying it yet. “Keep the old one
isolated. Don’t worry. I don’t expect the same from you.”

“It
would cripple me for weeks,” Cilreth said. “I have a lot of my own software in
here. Whole suites of crap you couldn’t imagine.”

“I
believe you. And I meant it. Go ahead and sync yourself when you’re ready.
Speaking of which, it’s your turn.”

They
switched spots on the medical table. Telisa accessed the instructions from the
table. Of course, the procedure was mostly automated. She skimmed some dire
looking emergency instructions.

If
something goes wrong, I’ll be left with a mess on my hands.

She
checked for the presence of a full medical suite. It was there. Apparently the
Vovokan ship had been well equipped. She allowed the robot to proceed.

It
went even faster than her switch out had gone. Cilreth was up within a minute.
They stared at their old links, coated in fluid, sitting on a tray.

Telisa
decided to try out another of the reasons she had decided to upgrade. One of
her link’s internal services included a new emotion management suite. The link
could suppress or enhance activity in parts of the brain related to emotions.
She saw a concentration suite that could control emotion to improve focus on
complex mental tasks. It was limited to one three hour cycle every twenty four
hours.

I
need to forget about Magnus for longer than three hours at a time.

“Can
you remove the emotion management limitations?” Telisa asked.

Cilreth
stopped working and looked at Telisa.

“Is
that what this is about?”

“No,
it’s about anything Shiny may have done to the other link,” Telisa said.

“I
won’t tamper with it. I’ve seen the research. If you leave those things on too
long, you’ll become a different person.”

“I
need to focus on this mission. I have to get Magnus back. The way I see it,
suppressing my feelings both keeps me from despair and also will help me fix
the problem.”

“If
you were able to do that, then you’d find that when you get him back, you
wouldn’t have any feelings for him anymore,” Cilreth said. “In fact, after a
week or two without emotions, humans don’t tend to turn them back on again. And
when you do, they take a long time to come back. If you turned it on for ten
years, not only would you not care about Magnus anymore, you probably wouldn’t
even have a will to live. Three hours a day should be sufficient.”

Telisa
sighed.

“How
about an endocrine pack?”

Space
force soldiers had implants in the abdomen that could interact with their
endocrine system by releasing compounds controlled through their link. The
ability to change various bodily signals was sometimes useful in combat
situations, as well as in dealing with the stress of prolonged engagements.