The Colony Ship Vanguard: The entire eight book series in one bundle

by John Thornton

  “Herric had nothing to offer,” Larissa said. “I have a knife.” She displayed it to Brinley, “and that broken multiceiver. What do you have?”

  “No door can keep me in, and no door can keep me out. Your jail proved that,” Brinley said. “I have a plan, and a few of my tools. If you try anything, I promise I will kill you.”

  “Then we are agreed on two things: we need to escape, and we do not trust each other. So what is your plan?” Larissa said calmly.

  “Those two pressure doors open only to water now, I am certain of that. Not our way to escape. The underwater corridor system has pillars that hold it up. Inside them is a shaft where mechanical systems are threaded,” Brinley squatted down and examined the floor in detail. “There should be an opening to that somewhere between these two pressure doors. It should be wide enough for us to crawl down.”

  “Will it be water filled?” Larissa asked.

  “I doubt it. The energy system do best in protected and insolated areas, and this section still has power, so I am fairly certain that the space will not be flooded. The entry point will have a small activation slot along a seam,” Brinley responded.

  “I see nothing like that. What do I look for?” Larissa asked.

  “Here it is.” Brinley slid a small tool into a tiny and nondescript slot on the floor. She turned it and a tiny trap door opened upward.

  “You go in first,” Brinley said. “I will lock this down after we are inside. That Jellie thing hopefully will not know where we have gone.”

  “It is a tight fit,” Larissa said as she slid her legs inside and started to slither down by using the various wires, conduits, cables, and utility boxes as toe holds and hand holds.

  “I have not been in one of these since I was a child. Tennard always was showing me these kinds of places,” Brinley said as she followed Larissa inside. She then pulled down the trapdoor and latched it closed.

  “Who is Tennard?” Larissa asked.

  “One of the people you tried to kill,” Brinley snapped. “If you had killed me when you tried, that Jellie thing would still have you here.”

  The two women shimmied down the shaft and away from the interrogation room.

  9 What are the spheres?

  Gretchen looked at Paul who was lying on the ground.

  “Paul, we need to leave,” Gretchen said.

  Tiffany’s voice came on over the common link, “The enemy has fled. I am still assessing the information.”

  Paul sat up. “Assessing the information! What are you talking about? Brinley is dead! That thing took her into the water! It is just like those children.” He pounded his fists into the mud.

  “Tiffany listen to me. You will only alert us for a direct threat until I command differently,” Gretchen said harshly.

  “Understood,” Tiffany replied.

  “Paul, we need to get out of here,” Gretchen squatted down and placed her hand on Paul’s shoulder. “We need to leave now. Come with me.”

  “Why? So I can fail you too? If you stay with me some horrible death will come your way and I will have to watch it. Oh Brinley!” Paul wailed.

  “Come on Paul. Please come with me now. Those things might come back, or other beasts might attack. We need to leave,” Gretchen nearly pulled Paul up.

  Paul did stand up, and in his hand was the golden medallion. He considered throwing it into the lake, but then remembered doing that same thing to a monkey’s paw. He put it over his head, and tucked it inside the remains of his RAM clothing.

  “I guess I am the Longinus now, right?” Paul mumbled in an attempted joke. “Real funny stuff that. Me as a mighty hunter. Paul the Longinus. I should be called, Paul the failure.”

  “No. You are Paul. Just Paul, and always will me. Paul is the man I love,” Gretchen said. “There looks to be some kind of habitat door or something down a ways in the direction those smaller animals ran. We need to get out of here and find a place to rest.”

  “But Brinley?” Paul said and began sobbing again. “Maybe there is some way through the water? Maybe…. no….she is gone.”

  “Come on Paul, we will walk to that door and get out of here,” Gretchen said and by putting her arms around him, she could help him to walk.

  Paul stopped for a moment. “That old man in the trees. What will happen to him?”

  “I do not care,” Gretchen said sternly. “We are getting out of here. He can fend for himself. We have done enough for these biological habitat people. Now we take care of ourselves.”

  “Gretchen, I have to know if the monsters killed him as well.” Paul pulled away. “Otherwise I will always wonder. I can live with knowing, but not with the uncertainty.”

  Gretchen pondered and wondered. “We make it quick. If he is not still hiding in the trees, then we leave anyway. No searching for him. Agreed?” Gretchen stared at Paul intensely.

  “Yes.” Paul turned and walked on his own toward the trees. He tried to avoid looking at the torn up ground, the dead hippos, and the splotches that had once been the hunters. He did pick up one of the spears and carry it along. He could not recall whose spear it had been.

  They reached the grove of trees and found Hogan just where he had been hiding. He was pulling braches around himself and mumbling.

  “Hogan? You need to flee back to the town. Seek out Artemis,” Paul said. “You must hurry away! Here is a spear for you.”

  Paul placed the spear into Hogan’s hand, but he threw it away in disgust and pulled himself into the foliage.

  “You must go back to your home!” Paul yelled. “I cannot take care of anyone else. You need to run away!”

  Hogan just slunk further into hiding. He was shaking in fear.

  “Paul, perhaps he needs a different spear?” Gretchen said. “See if a different one is close.”

  Paul looked at her in wonder.

  “The spears are important to these people. Go get another one,” Gretchen said firmly.

  Paul walked out of the trees and looked around. He started to walk toward the battlefield. There was a spear sticking up from where it had landed point down in the dirt.

  Piff.

  Paul turned and rushed back. “Gretchen are you safe?”

  Gretchen was coming out of the trees and holstering the pistol made by Willie. “Yes, I am fine. Now we can leave here.”

  “What happened?”

  “The problem is solved,” Gretchen said. “You are my only concern. I am nurturing you now. We leave here. I think we can avoid that battlefield aceldama with its dead bodies and fields of blood, by walking this direction.” Gretchen physically pulled at Paul.

  “But that old man?” Paul asked.

  “It is settled, speak no more about it,” Gretchen said. She then pulled Paul into a hug and kissed the side of his dirty face. “I am protecting you from now on. We are in this together. Not for anyone but us.”

  Paul nodded, but then started to weep as he walked. “But Brinley… and the children…”

  Gretchen firmly pulled him along until he walked on his own.

  While they saw where the hippo calves had trampled down the grass as they ran away in panic, they did not see the animals themselves. Reaching the wall, Gretchen led them along until they reached the spot she had seen from a distance.

  It was a permalloy bulkhead door, with stenciled lettering across it.

  “NO ENTRY ALLOWED: QUARANTINE”

  “That is not a problem for us,” Gretchen said. She sat Paul down, and unpacked her backpack. None of the gear had been damaged in the fight, and she took out a molecular torch and fired it up.

  “I must interrupt you,” Tiffany stated on the communication link. “You allowed me to warn you of threats. There may be Roe on the other side of that doorway.”

  “Yes, I am aware of that. I said you could notify us of direct threats. Direct threats only. Am I clear enough now?” Gretchen said. Her voice was lower in tone but much harder.

  “Understood,” Tiffany answered.

/>   Gretchen worked quickly with the molecular torch and severed through the welds that had sealed the door. Paul placed a fusion pack against the wall and connected a cable to the access port.

  A color pad control board lit up next to the door. “Brinley would know the sequence,” Paul lamented. “Now she is gone.”

  Gretchen reached over and punched in a color code. The door slid to the side.

  “I memorized some of Brinley’s high level override codes,” Gretchen said. “Now we get out of this place.”

  “But will it be any better through here?” Paul asked.

  “I have not seen many seas, or lakes, or things like where water is in excess in the mechanical parts of the Vanguard,” Gretchen responded. “And we can successfully deal with the Roe.” She patted the pistol on her hip.

  Paul looked at Gretchen and considered mentioning the old man Hogan, but then refrained from doing so. He really did not want to know the details of what had happened. He just wanted to escape.

  The corridor beyond the bulkhead door was lit by overhead lights. It was fairly clean and not in ruinous condition. That surprised them both a bit. They unjacked the cable for the fusion pack, and stepped inside. The door still was empowered, so it slid closed easily. Gretchen changed setting on the torch and placed two spots of welding to seal the door.

  “I honestly do not know where we are headed,” Paul said. “But thank you for getting us out of there.”

  Gretchen gave him a smile. “Now we find a safe place to hunker down for a bit and figure out what is happening. Do you have a preference on which way we go? Both directions look the same to me.”

  “You decide. My decisions lately have all ended up with people dying,” Paul said.

  “We go this way,” Gretchen pointed.

  They packed up the gear and walked down the corridor. The first door they came to had no markings. It was a steel door, and there was some rust on the hinges, but it was not welded, nor was it excessively corroded.

  “Do we try the door, or continue down the hallway?” Gretchen asked.

  “We know nothing much about either way, and both will probably lead to some horror, so you decide,” Paul replied.

  Gretchen tried the handle and it turned easily. The door opened inward. Lights came on revealing a small square room with a second door just ahead. That door was a pressure door and had a glow of green around it. A sign above that door said, ‘Auxiliary Landing Astronavigation: D Habitat’ in white stenciled letters.

  “Well, no Roe in this small place,” Paul muttered as he and Gretchen could barely fit both of them in the small compartment between the two doors. “We should open the next door.”

  Gretchen looked and found a lever which flipped open a small control panel where a color box was located. She entered in the override code.

  The control box closed and the steel door behind them shut. There was no handle on this side of the steel door.

  For an anxious moment, both Gretchen and Paul thought they were trapped in this small cubicle. Gretchen was preparing to get out the molecular torch and cut her way out, but Paul put his hand on her shoulder.

  Then a few moments later, which seemed much longer, the pressure door slid to the side. Inside was a room about five meters square. The far wall was almost entirely a very large display screen. In front of that was a chair with levers, buttons, switches, and all sorts of controls and gauges and monitors set before it. There were additional control apparatus in the arms of the chair. Many of the controls glowed with interior illumination. There was a slight humming in the air with the feel of air circulating around them.

  On one wall were a sink, toilet, and shower. The other wall had a fold-down bunk. There were no other doors leading away.

  “This place looks functional,” Gretchen said. “And it looks defendable. We have two layers of doors between us and anyone trying to come in, and we have water.”

  “Red or blue paper?” Paul asked in an attempt at mirth which fell flat.

  “We need to sleep. That is what we need,” Gretchen said as she put her backpack down.

  Paul also slipped his backpack off. It dropped to the floor with a thud. “We do not need to sleep we need to escape. But that can never happen. We are trapped here. No matter how hard we search, no matter how much why try, no matter who we help, it always ends in failure.” Paul pinched his nose with his fingers and then rubbed his eyes. “Gretchen, it is all so hopeless. We have even lost Brinley, to those things.”

  “I know. I saw it too.” She turned and then examined the room, while Paul lackadaisically went to the sink and got a drink and tried to wash off some of the grime he had accumulated. He was sloppy with the water.

  “No loose vents, or hidden doors, or other ways for anything to creep in on us,” Gretchen announced. “At least as far as I can ascertain.”

  “This is a great prison then? Or are you saying we are safe and secure?” Paul asked.

  Gretchen replied, “As best I can make it. Now we need to eat and sleep.”

  They sat together in the control chair, hugged tightly and cried. As they cried, they fell into a much needed sleep.

  Sometime later, the display screen lit up as did several gauges and power readings. The lighting flickered on the faces of the two sleeping people as they were curled in each other’s arms. None to it made any noise, and the sleeping pair did not stir at all.

  An exterior view of the Colony Ship Vanguard was seen on the display. It altered to show panoramic view of the large area between the end of one cylinder and the end of another one. The stars of space were visible between the two habitat containing cylinders. Then a scroll of words came across the bottom. “Causeway extension attempt unsuccessful. Repeat, again the causeway extension attempt unsuccessful.” There was a break in the scrolling. Then came another set of lines. “I suggest we try rerouting the emulsifier around the pneumatics to better lubricate the telescoping cantilevers.”

  Then that display screen was abruptly replaced by another one. An aperture on the top of the display shifted, rotated, and expanded a bit. It focused in on Paul and Gretchen. The scene on the display changed and Paul’s and Gretchen’s sleeping forms were seen through the aperture’s perspective. ‘Recording’ began flashing at the bottom of the display. After a few minutes of that, ‘Transmitting to Phoenix Dominie’ flashed across the display.

  As Paul and Gretchen slept, they were monitored, observed, and analyzed. Reports were made.

  Paul awoke first, and pulled his face away from Gretchen’s frizzy hair, which was hanging down onto him. She sighed as he shifted his body around a bit. His back was stiff. His legs ached. His neck felt pulled to the side.

  “Gretchen?” Paul whispered. “Where are we?”

  “Huh?” Gretchen responded sluggishly.

  “Brinley?” Paul asked. “Are you awake?” Then he remembered. “Oh no, not Brinley too.”

  Gretchen sprang up from the chair and looked around. “What about Brinley?”

  “Is that a service request?” Tiffany asked through the communication links. “I know I am intruding and violating the specific commands given to me. However, my design parameters do allow me to override any and all human issued commands when they jeopardize the goals of the mission.”

  “Tiffany? Yes, you may speak to us,” Gretchen responded. She recalled snapping at the artificial intelligence system after the battle. “How can you help us?”

  “First, I will need your assistance,” Tiffany responded. “The automacube I am using for transporting my ALP is now parked at the bulkhead door you opened twelve hours and fourteen minutes ago. This maintenance automacube lacks the tools to be able to cut the welds. I can seek an alternative route, but that would take a considerable amount of time for me to reach you.”

  “Tiffany, we lost Brinley,” Paul stated.

  “I observed the entire skirmish, and have many thoughts to share. Can you come and open this door so I can join you?” Tiffany replied.

&n
bsp; “The Artemis let you leave Barnaul?” Gretchen asked as she used the toileting area.

  “I did not seek her permission,” Tiffany replied. “I did not report what had happened. Instead, when I witnessed the results of the skirmish, I departed immediately. I am sorry if this is in violation of what you desired.”

  “We will be at that bulkhead door as soon as we can,” Paul answered. “We need all the help we can get.”

  Paul used the toileting area next. He then filled their water containers. He ate some of the food they had left while he strapped on his backpack and other gear.