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monsters swarmed it and ignored him.
"Let's see the bots-eye view," Ferret asked. Gorilla obliged and relayed a near-ground-level image
in the visible spectrum. There was an almost-clearing ahead; one of those spots where the trees thinned
enough for a dropship insertion or a small camp. The bots had stopped there. They'd been programmed
to pause if they encountered anything with a pattern not on file as "natural," and what was here certainly
wasn't.
"Is that what we're looking at?" Ferret asked.
"At and for," Gorilla replied. "I dunno what it is."
All that could be seen was a thin spot in the trees. Within were some lumps and mounds. They
resembled burial cairns from some lost civilization, weathered and beaten for ages. There was a
wrongness to the area that even the humans could feel.
"The source is in there somewhere," Gorilla said. "No threats show. I've got both bots watching it
and the flyers perched on trees on the far side. Nothing except local life."
"Gorilla," Bell Toll said, "send a bot in slowly. One step at a time. Ferret and Tirdal can pull up to
the edge. We'll stay back for support. Thor and Shiva, keep an eye on our asses." There were pings of
acknowledgment and the team moved.
They'd shifted perhaps five meters when Gorilla said, "Stop." Everyone froze, fingers on triggers,
until he said, "No threat, but I've IDed the source. Central mound, right there. Power emanations, but
very low."
"Okay," Bell Toll acknowledged. "Let's move in. Ferret and Tirdal wait where you are. Gun Doll
and I will take a supporting position on the left. Dagger and Shiva on the right. Gorilla will pull up and
relieve Ferret, then Ferret advances."
Upon closer inspection, the area wasn't a clearing at all. It was tree covered, like the surrounding
terrain, but in a radius around the central mound the trees were slightly stunted and there were stones
poking up through the loam. It was the lack of animals and the stunted trees that gave it an odd feel.
"Radiation?" asked Bell Toll.
"Not much above background levels," Gorilla said after studying his sensors.
"There's a minor pulse to the emitted frequency," Dagger added. "It's steady. Nothing dangerous to
us, but I suppose after enough years it builds up. There also might be chemicals in the soil, depending on
what this device is. The surface here reads differently. And those stones are odd."
They were among the mounds, now. Ferret and Thor had their backs in, as did Gun Doll, her
automatic cannon moving in slow sweeps as she studied the trees.
Tirdal brushed at one of the stones and examined the striations revealed beneath the clinging dirt. It
was an extruded block, not carved native stone.
"Plascrete," he said softly.
The others shifted carefully over to him.
"What did you say?" Bell Toll asked.
"Plascrete," he repeated. "Look at the extrusion marks and the texture. It was produced on site
with no concern for prettiness."
Gun Doll ran her fingers over the chipped corners of the revealed mass.
"How old does plascrete have to be to crack and crumble like that?"
"Very old, I would guess . . . and Sense," Tirdal said.
Spreading out and examining other revealed rocks determined that the place was a ruin. It was
some sort of very old building or fortification, hundreds, possibly thousands of years old. All that was left
were a few mounds of tumbled plascrete overgrown with misshapen, gene-damaged trees and tangled
vines. In the cold drizzle and half-light, it was an eerie, disturbing scene.
Gorilla had the bot dig into the lump, carefully. It made quiet incursions by drill, split cracks
between the holes with a pneumatic ram and gingerly pulled out sections. It then made another cut,
slightly deeper. Ferret, Dagger and Shiva stayed in an outer perimeter, nerves naked wires, alert for any
threatening movement, or any movement at all. The other half of the troop formed to contain anything
that might erupt from within the dig.
"Energy source," Tirdal said.
"Yes?" prompted Bell Toll.
"I'm not sure. Just some source of energy. They all feel somewhat alike . . . heat, radio, UV . . . just
a sense of intruding rays, not enough to be harmful."
"Got that, Gorilla?" Bell Toll asked.
"Got it," he nodded softly, adjusting the bot to dig wider before going deeper. "We're going to have
to either hide these blocks the bot is cutting, or stick them back when done. A pile will be a giveaway."
"Yes," Bell Toll agreed. "But it can't be much deeper now, can it?"
In answer, Tirdal said, "There."
"Yeah, the bot sees it now," Gorilla agreed, looking at his screen. "I'm clearing around it. It's a root
power source of some kind, encased in plasteel."
Bell Toll dialed up enhancement and resolution on his helmet and tried to get a glimpse into the
hole, past the ludicrously hulking limbs of the small bot.
"Oh, shit," he said softly.
"What?" asked Gun Doll, being closest. She pulled up her own screen and said, " 'Oh, shit' is right."
Enough of the case was revealed for its architecture to become apparent. That combined with the
energy readings made it familiar to anyone who studied history or matters military.
It was an Aldenata artifact. Apparently a functional one.
The Aldenata were extinct. It had been they who had bred the Posleen for war, and screwed it up
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