A slight smile appeared on her face as the pharmaceuticals took effect. Her blazing orange eyes continued to glare at the automacube. “The flour was bitter. The flour was…” Her voice stopped as her breathing became more labored and her overall color more ashen.
“I apologize for being unable to cure you,” M147 stated as the assessment tools showed the woman had died.
Meanwhile, E11 had rolled over to S76 and began repairs. The damaged drive wheel was set into proper alignment. The multi-jointed arm was disassembled and the fractured ball joint was removed. The broken and severed cables and wiring were reconnected. By shortening the arm, and remounting the joints in a different arrangement, E11 was able to restore 74% of the function to S76’s appendage. Complete restoration would take place when proper replacement parts were located. E11 put in cue another message, this one to Replication and Fabrication, requesting those replacement parts. But since connection to the lattice was forbidden, that message would remain unsent until connections were allowed. Lastly, cleaning and disinfectants were applied to the exterior of the automacube and the human remains removed. Evidence of the Roe’s attack remained, but S76 was restored as much as possible.
M147 switched from working as a medic back to the alternative service of being a tracking agent pursuing the fugitives. It extended out the arm and sampled the air using its method for detecting pneumatic-exhalation residue. The fugitives’ DNA remnants were present in the air, but in more diluted quantities due to the recent melee. So M147 rolled slowly around the large room taking samples and analyzing them to establish a pattern for where the fugitives had gone.
The room branched in three directions, all of equal size and consistency. There were no labels or signs on the walls. The leftmost passageway had the strongest concentration of the DNA remnants, so M147 then tried the Dermo-deprehension Anisotensic flood light on the deck of that passageway. The footprints were again revealed, and so the four automacubes followed that pathway.
Behind them, a chorus of tiny orange glittering eyes blinked from hiding places in cracks, crevasses, and under doors, or in ducts and ventilation shafts. Then movement spilled out into the room near the bulkhead door. A mass of infected rats scurried out from various places. S101 whirled around, its weapons systems ready. Tactical analysis showed no security threat, therefore, the red automacube did not engage, but instead spun back around and followed the other three machines.
The rats raced toward the bloody mess that had been a Roe. They set to work devouring the fresh meal.
4 free flight
Brinley directed the shuttle away from her home. She had flown from this docking bay many times, but never knowing she was not wanted or allowed to come back. Her emotions were a jumble.
The shuttle had view ports out the front, sides, and rear. The outside of the Colony Ship Vanguard was immense. The hull was a dark taupe color at this location, and there was a maze of large boxes, jutting irregularities, and other mechanical apparatus on the hull. The hanger bay doors were light gray colored and marked by worn yellow stripes painted across them. The hull stretched far into the distance. Beyond it was the blackness of space and the myriad of stars set into that blackness.
Brinley expertly positioned the small shuttle a distance away from the hull and had it remain in a stable position relative to the ship. In essence it was hovering alongside, above, or below, the Vanguard. With zero gravity, direction was relative.
“Can we now try to contact Tiffany?” Paul said as he connected the communication link over his ear.
“Yes,” Gretchen replied. “I did not want those Free Rangers to know what was happening.” Gretchen slipped the other communication system over her own ear. She handed the com-link they had made for Brinley to her. “So I did not suggest this earlier.”
“What? Why?” Brinley said as she hung the com-link over her neck. She turned her head from the shuttle’s controls and looked in surprise at Gretchen. “Maybe we could have stayed and they would have understood it all.”
“From an artificial intelligence?” Gretchen asked. “Brinley, would they have trusted our AI Tiffany? Before you were healed, would you have trusted our AI?””
Brinley looked back to her controls. “No. That would not have mattered. But I do not understand why your gear did not work for them.”
“Shall we ask Tiffany?” Paul inquired. “I have some ideas, but… Tiffany? Can you hear me?”
The artificial intelligence system Tiffany responded. “Yes. I am here.”
“Tiffany, what has been happening?” Paul asked.
“I have been patiently waiting here in the faster-than-light scout ship. I have played two thousand seven hundred fourteen games of chess. White or black has won each game. What have you been doing?” Tiffany asked. The mechanical voice came from all links, so Brinley heard it as well.
“Is that a joke?” Paul asked snidely. “Or do you really not know what has happened?”
“I do still use humor on occasion to break tension and help humans to cope. I hope it is helpful,” Tiffany replied. “The last contact I have with you was when the three of you encountered the outer perimeter of the safe zone Brinley calls, JE300. That was when Brinley entered the proper sequence to open the bulkhead pressure doors. The guards at that perimeter took the equipment, remember?”
“How do you know the name of the safe zone?” Brinley asked. She was quite startled as safe zone names were rarely shared by Free Rangers.
“I have been secretly listening through the communication links. I was surprised you handed them over to the Free Rangers,” Tiffany answered.
“I trusted them. That was a mistake,” Brinley admitted. “Once those people, well, they were like my family.”
“When the equipment was removed from the vicinity of Paul and Gretchen, I deemed it best to avoid exposing myself until I assessed the situation more thoroughly. I first deactivated the weapons, for safety. Then most of the power systems of all the equipment were shut down and I set an activation code which would be triggered by Paul’s or Gretchen’s voice. That prompt is how it was reactivated. You should now find that all the equipment is fully functional. However, during that mode of surreptitiousness, I was able to listen while operating in such a low-level manner as to be virtually undetectable to the tools the Free Rangers used. Fusion power is not familiar to them, so they lacked the tools to trace those elements. Their lufi-amalgum systems were easily fooled,” Tiffany said.
“So tell us what you learned,” Gretchen encouraged.
“The enclave of Free Rangers, known as JE300 is in the midst of a leadership crisis,” Tiffany said. “The people who assessed this equipment expressed grave concerns about who would be the leader. Shall I play back all or even some of the recordings I made of those conversations?”
“No. Not now anyway,” Paul stated. “We need a plan on where to go now and what to do. Brinley was thrown out, and I know Gretchen and I are not welcome back there.”
“Besides, I already have a plan,” Brinley said. “We will fly this small shuttle and dock somewhere. Then we find an abandoned hanger and get a better ship. Then we will take that to Oasis. Those Free Rangers there are probably our best hope of fitting in. But we will need a much better ship than this one.”
“Tiffany? Can you plot our location?” Gretchen asked.
“That should not be a problem,” the AI Tiffany answered.
“Not when we are outside of the Vanguard,” Brinley interrupted. “No one can plot us outside. We will need to navigate by the landmarks on the hull. This we have to do from memory. We Free Rangers take great pride in knowing the routes along the hull. Since there are no real scanners or ways to chart courses outside, we have marked certain routes with external paints and landmarks, but you need to know the sequences to follow those.”
“You are flying by sight alone?” Paul asked incredulously. “No scanner, no AI plotting, no old-fashioned lidar or even radar?”
“That is how I always
fly. I have never gotten too lost,” Brinley said with a wink. “That is the only way possible since the Outbreak so long ago. The ship’s external scanners and such were uncoupled and components destroyed, so there is no other way to navigate.”
Tiffany replied, “That is not entirely correct. Brinley, I can monitor your course and keep a detailed plot of it. I have been running long range scans since we landed on the Vanguard. I have much of the hull mapped and charted. Using the equipment here in the scout ship, linked to the communication systems, as well as the prior scans I have made of the hull sections of the Vanguard, I can plot wherever you go. I can send a display through the communication systems if you wish to see it. You do have the knowledge of what is behind the places on the hull, which I do not have. But I will cooperate with you in mapping and charting and planning whatever routes you desire.”
“Sure!” Brinley replied. “I should not have doubted you could do what you say. But I always was taught that Baldwin and his crew disconnected all the macroactinide capacitor enhancers and destroyed their mounts. That prevented the CPO from using shuttles against them as they started the Free Rangers.”
A small beam of light projected from the communication link near Paul’s ear and a three dimensional display materialized in the small cabin. It showed the hull of the Vanguard in a line drawing made in green, and the position of the small shuttle as a blue triangle. “This is the local vicinity of your current location. I have stored the memory of this hanger bay, J-90 and will add information as we encounter it, or as Brinley informs us.”
Brinley looked from her controls to the display provided by Tiffany. “That is super helpful. I can see how this will be a huge advantage for us as we get established in trading and commerce between the habitats.”
“Trade and commerce?” Paul asked with skepticism. “That Constable Larissa called it smuggling. So your plan is to make us all smugglers?”
“Do you have a better idea?” Brinley asked. “Besides, smuggler is an ugly term. We are merchants of trade, unless you have some other occupation you want to pursue?”
“No. I do not,” Paul said. “Besides, I guess it is as good as anything else we can do here. We cannot go back to Dome 17, nor will those people ever come here. So just forget I said anything. Your plan is my plan. Call me Paul the Smuggler.”
“Brinley, Paul does make a point, be it ever so subtle,” Gretchen said as she reached out and squeezed Paul thigh in support. “We do not know much at all about what is happening, and the last place we went, that safe zone,” Gretchen waved her hand, “did not work out so well for us.”
“I keep forgetting you guys are so foreign, and so uninformed. You have great technology and I want to learn all about it, but you are like little children in other ways,” Brinley stated. “Like I said, we need to find another hanger bay, swap out this shuttle. This one is a model S14 which is way too small for what we need to do. That gets me thinking,” Brinley said as she stared at the three dimensional display projected by Tiffany. “Tiffany?”
“Yes, Brinley. How may I help?” the AI replied.
“Hanger bays will have large flat surfaces on the exterior hull with overlapping design seams. Those are stripped in yellow. Can you recognize color in your scans?”
“Only on a limited basis within a line of sight of the scout ship. There are no yellow marked areas within the line of sight from this position.”
“And that scout ship of yours cannot fly to another location?” Brinley asked.
“Not without significant repair and reconstruction as well as reloading of thruster fuel and other needed items.”
“But this display shows you can scan for structures and shapes and designs on the hull surface, right?” Brinley asked.
“That is correct.”
“So scan the hanger bay we just left. That is a small bay, but the same style of hanger doors is used on all the hanger bays. Others are just larger in scale,” Brinley instructed. “Even the airlocks will have a similar design, but those are way too small for a ship.”
“Excellent idea!” Gretchen added. “Tiffany can locate another hanger bay by the exterior characteristics. Tiffany? Will that work?”
There was a slight pause, and then Tiffany responded. “Using the proposed conjectures, I have already located a number of possibilities. I will relay them to the display already shown.”
The three dimensional display shifted to a more distant view, and there were yellow dots in various locations.
“That is amazing!” Brinley remarked. “I am going to follow the sequence, the landscape trail I know toward Hanger Bay 219. It is one that is a Free Ranger bazaar, we can confirm Tiffany’s readings that way, and not risk getting away from the known paths.” Brinley shifted several levers and the shuttle’s thrusters fired in precise reply to her directions. “See that tower there?” She pointed to a projection on the hull in the distance. “That is our first turn.”
“Will the people at the bazaar welcome us?” Paul asked.
“They might, if we were going to stop and dock. But I want to make sure Tiffany is giving us accurate info. I also want to map out a few more places on this display before we head into the unknown. Too many Free Rangers have been lost trying to blaze new trails around the hull on the Vanguard. Tennard always taught me that knowing the landscape was essential. I sure hope he is not hurt. If he was injured by Markari, I will….” Brinley bit off the rest of her words as she maneuvered the small shuttle past the tower.
“You said you have never been lost, but now say lots of Free Rangers have been lost flying blind out here?” Paul asked.
“Right. I am not like those who got lost. I know the sequences and I am a good pilot,” Brinley smiled her wide grin.
“I am recording your route as you fly,” Tiffany said. “That way there is a permanent record.”
“That AI of yours if different than any I have interacted with before,” Brinley said. “Talking with the others was not much better than addressing a medical automacubes. But of course, all the AIs the Free Rangers have are disconnected from the lattice. Oh, here we set course on that series of red lights on the hull. We will not travel all the way to them, but only until we are over the broken array. That is where we will again alter course.”
“I can hardly believe you actually fly out here with only reconnoitering from what you see on the hull.” Paul was looking out the port and rubbing the hair on his chin. “There are a vast number of things on the hull and you are able to differentiate a course by using them.”
“I have been flying shuttles since I was little. Tennard took me on all his trade missions. I know the sequence on all the routes. But now we have a backup.” She pointed to the display as it was now showing the green of the hull, the yellow of the potential hanger bays, and a dotted blue line following the blue triangle which was the symbol for their shuttle.
Brinley maneuvered the shuttle at nearly an exactly consistent distance away from the hull. They zipped past multitudes of sections of the hull and followed it along its long axis. They made several maneuvers and then traveled across the ship sideways. After some time the horizon came up on them.
“Now, we pass over to the next habitat,” Brinley commented as the hull receded away from them for the first time. “See the markings of the yellow hanger bay in the distance? That is Hanger Bay 219, and it is one of the main docks on Oasis.”
As Paul looked out the port his view revealed that the section of hull was now slopped away and in the distance there was a connection between the enormous cylinder of the habitat they were departing and the equally large cylinder they were approaching. Almost as if the cylinders were stacked on top of each other.
“Oasis? Is that the name for the habitat or the smuggler marketplace thing you are taking us to?” Paul asked.
“Wow, you really do not know much. Oasis is the name for the A Habitat. Oasis has lots water with islands. Two towns: Murom, Kimry. But we will not be at the habitat when we dock. We
will be at the hanger bay. Like back in the Wilds, that other habitat, the hanger bay is separate from the biological habitat. The safe zone around 219 is one of the bigger Free Ranger places. A few hundred people permanently live there.”
“And between that safe zone and the habitat are corridors and places where the Roe roam?” Gretchen asked. She too was looking out a port. “And that large connection place at the center? Is that a habitat or what?”
“You mean the drive ship? Or the needle ship? Or the core?” Brinley asked. “Those are under Central Planning Office control. We will never be going there. And that safe zone does have cleared passages to the habitat, at least in Oasis. Not all the habitats have that.”
The AI Tiffany inquired, “Brinley, are we at the destination you were planning? I will label the map appropriately if you confirm the location.”
The Colony Ship Vanguard: The entire eight book series in one bundle Page 27