“This place was not sealed in a systematic or refined way,” Brinley said. “looks more like a panic job to me.”
“I wonder which of the thousand different threats the Vanguard offers made these people panic?” Paul stated.
“Paulie, you and Gretchen, and I, thanks to you, are all immune to the Outbreak. You probably do not understand how great a threat it was to the habitats and to everyone living in them when that happened. It was sixty some years ago, but looking at this work you can see how scared these people were?”
“Oh, I know about being scared,” Paul answered as he walked toward where the light was above the exit.
“I tried three different access ports, but none are connected in for the fusion pack to help.” Gretchen replaced the fusion pack in her backpack and again drew out her pistol.
“Larissa did not send us to a trap did she?” Paul asked.
“No Paulie, that did not happen. I am sure of that. She said this location was close to a main entry into this habitat. So if we follow the major corridors we should find that door. The main entrances are pretty clearly marked. From what we have seen here in the transport hub I imagine that the entrance will be obviously sealed over.” Brinley peered around Paul and out between the jammed sliding door.
“So what is to stop that transport vehicle from just detaching and stranding us here?” Paul asked.
“I will prevent that.” Gretchen pulled off her backpack and took out the molecular torch. She cut off a section of ductwork that was hanging loos and laid it across the open back door of the vehicle. “This will prevent the vehicle from leaving. Right Brinley?”
“That will do it. Besides, we should not be very long getting to that main entrance and cutting our way in. Hopefully that girl will be waiting to come with us,” Brinley replied.
The three of them walked individually past the jammed sliding door. Paul went first and had his fusion pack light in one hand and his pistol in the other.
“It is fairly dark, but that makes sense with the power so disrupted here. Look ahead, the corridor leads right to that upward ramp. I think at the top of the ramp we will find the big doors which will lead to the habitat. This is a similar design to what I saw around Oasis,” Brinley stated.
They walked briskly along toward the stairs.
“Brinley? The Jellies really took over all of Oasis?” Gretchen asked.
“We think so. Tennard and Sigmond got out. They said the water levels were rising and both towns were flooding. Some other refugees escaped before them, but most people died. The toxic brown waters killed many, and the refugees say the Jellies were killing everything they could reach. There have been no multiceiver signals from inside Oasis, or from the corridors and decks around it. Many of those were already ruined from brown water, and the hanger bays had serious damage from the shuttle crashes. Tennard and Sigmond came down a corridor that they said had been decompressed and was in vacuum. They used spacesuits to get away, and then crossed the constituent joint to enter an exterior repair station outside of the Wilds.”
“The Central Planning Office did nothing?” Gretchen asked. “You would think they would admit the aliens were a threat by now? They should be helping defend the Vanguard.”
“Those androids help? What a joke. As they call themselves the novanthropoid personnel, they are the utmost of the crazy things on this horrible ship,” Paul said. “And on a ship of bizarre craziness, that means a lot.”
“But Paul, the artificial intelligence systems would have to have defaults which would know that poisoning a whole biological habitat is a threat,” Gretchen said.
“I take back what I said; the AIs on the Vanguard are the highest level of crazy. Remember that Phoenix thing?” Paul replied.
“Paulie, the AIs can be made as stand-alone units. Those have been helpful to us. They take a lot of maintenance to keep them from slipping back into the lattice control, but it is worth it. Remember how valuable Tiffany has been to us all?”
“Tiffany is gone,” Paul said in sorrow.
“I will check in,” Brinley said and thumbed the multiceiver. “Larissa, do you still have contact with that refugee girl?”
“Yes, Brinley. She says she is just on the habitat side of a set of four large doors. The multiceiver signals show you are not far away at all.”
“Thanks, Larissa,” Brinley said and led them onward.
Suddenly, as they reached the stairway there was a very loud hissing sound and a high pitched growl from just ahead of them. Paul looked down and shined the beam of light around. Two bright green eyes met his and the cat then made a long yowl. turned away and hissed again.
“That is Bernie,” Gretchen said.
That animal sound was followed by a voice saying, “It burst my bubble!”
“That is a Roe!” Paul called out.
Brinley and Gretchen were both knocked down as the Roe raced at them from out of the darkness and down the stairs. It ran so fast, none of the people could take a shot at it.
“It burst my bubble!” The Roe screamed.
Paul swung his pistol after the Roe and fired.
Piff. Piff. Piff.
He missed all three times.
The Roe leaped sideways and sprang off the wall. It flipped once in the air and a kick landed on Paul’s hand which held the pistol. The weapon was knocked loose and fell down into the clutter on the floor.
Wump
Brinley fired the L-ROD from where she lay on the floor.
The Roe was thrown up against the wall by the impact. For an instant the Roe just stayed there. They could see that it had been a young adult woman once. Its blazing orange eyes looked too wide for its face. Its long hair was silky and thick. Its clothing was intact, silvery-blue colored, with red stripes down the sleeves.
The blast from L-ROD had struck the Roe square in its chest. The detonation of the organic disruptor took place and a shrill whine echoed with ear hurting intensity. The chest of the Roe then crumbled into a soggy pile of mush as the rest of the body fell onto itself and sloshed down the wall. The pile of ruined flesh spread across the deck.
“Well, it works on the Roe,” Paul said as he dug through the trash on the floor and recovered his own pistol.
“That Roe was faster than the others,” Gretchen observed. “Is that new, or just this particular one?”
“I am not sure. That one looked freshly infected. Its clothing was in good shape. I wonder if she had been a refugee from the habitat trying to escape?” Brinley said.
“Well, the tagalongs will be here soon, so we better get away,” Paul said as he rushed up the stairs followed by Gretchen and Brinley. At the top was a junction where the corridor divided to either side. Both directions were dark, and the fusion pack light only illuminated a limited space.
“They came from the water!” a voice screeched.
This time all three were alert and ready as another Roe emerged from some hidden place at Paul’s right and charged at him. He leveled his pistol and fired from a mere two meters away.
Piff. Piff.
The Roe’s head and chest exploded with the impacts from the pistol at such a close range.
“The cherries are almost ripe!” another Roe rushed at them from the other direction.
Piff. Piff.
Gretchen spun and fired and hit that Roe. It fell backward and tumbled a bit as its broken body absorbed the projectile impacts.
“Now the Roe come in threes?” Paul complained as he glanced around. “Team work in evil trying to kill us?”
All the Roe were wearing the same colored clothing. All had been young people. The one Paul shot had sandy colored hair and a thick mustache. The one Gretchen had dropped had thick, heavy, black hair and long sideburns. All three had shown the same malevolent hatred in their glowing orange eyes.
“These were some kind of group,” Brinley said. “Maybe a family when they were human. See over there, there was some kind of a camp.”
Paul swung the l
ight and it revealed that down the one hall, set into a recessed area, there was a sort of makeshift tent made from canvass. There was a mattress lying under it, and two chairs propped against the wall. A few pieces of equipment were around the mattress.
“They may have all come into these decks to escape the Jellie attack in the habitat,” Brinley replied. “I have not yet seen or heard any signs of tagalongs here. If these are newly infected Roe, that would make sense. Tagalongs find a Roe and then feed on what it leaves behind. These must have been new infections. It is such a tragedy, it could have been prevented.”
“Did you want me to just ask them to sit down so we could cure their infections?” Paul said. “I am sure they would have loved to cooperate. We already had you strapped in when the infection overcame you, and you were tough to handle even when restrained.”
“Paulie, I will not forget you saved my life. It is still a tragedy that these people did not have the chance I had.”
“Brinley, have you been inoculating people against this mutant rabies infection?” Gretchen asked.
“Yes. Nearly everyone in the Wilds has been made immune. We had hopes of sharing the treatments with the CPO so as to get the immunity spread to the whole of the Vanguard, but those androids refused to believe us. We could not get any of the AIs to accept the premise either. Every medical system we tried to inform just rejected the information. So the inoculations have all been done through using the Dome 17 medical kits.”
“Brinley and Gretchen, if we are going into the habitat, I think we need to go into the habitat. Standing here and waiting for the tagalongs is not my idea of smart,” Paul said. “I think the access doors are over there.”
Paul pointed to where the beam from his light was shining. It exposed four sets of extra tall double doors. The one on the nearest end had a shiny new weld across it. The weld was not permalloy, like had been used to seal shut the other doors, but rather was a much softer metal.
“Paulie, you did find it. That really does look like the way into the Woods. I think these people opened the sealed doors, and came into here. From what I know of people who grew up in a habitat, they must really have been terrified of something to do that.”
“Jellies are pretty terrifying,” Paul said. He walked over to the door with the new weld. “So these poor people ran for their lives from the Jellies, cut into the door and got it open. Then they sealed it shut as a barrier to the Jellies, but encountered some Roe that infected them? That sounds like normal life on the Vanguard. Just another time and way people die.”
Gretchen had pulled off her backpack and was connecting up the molecular torch. “Paul, you have a point. If all three of those Roe we killed were habitat people, and were newly infected, what gave them the infection?”
Brinley looked around. She used the optics on the L-ROD to look down the dark hallway in both directions. The weapon had the ability to pick up and magnify light sources as well as heat signatures from living bodies. “I do not see anything down either way. No Roe or tagalongs.”
Gretchen was severing open the welds on the door, and Paul asked, “Can we contact the girl who is supposed to be on the other side? If she got killed or became a Roe, is there any sense to pursuing this?”
“Larissa would have informed us if there was a change,” Brinley said. “But Paulie, go ahead and contact Larissa and ask. I will keep guard over Gretchen while she works.”
Paul refused to contact Larissa and watched as Gretchen cut through the welds and then he helped her pry open the door. It was dark in the habitat.
“I expected bright sky tube light,” Paul said. “Are you sure that is a biological habitat? It does smell like one, but that place where Victor died smelled too.”
“Paul, look.” Gretchen pointed upward as they stepped through the doorway.
A dim light was seen running across the far away ceiling. “That must be a sky tube at night,” Gretchen said. For far above them there was that pale strip crossing the sky. “It is the nighttime sky tube at about mid phase.”
As their eyes adjusted they could see a bit more in the dim light and the vast reaches of the habitat. The whole area was made up of silvers, grays, and blacks, in shades, and in indistinct shapes.
“We better seal this door shut again,” Gretchen said. “We do not want the tagalongs to get into here.”
“Sealing the door worked well for those other three,” Paul lamented.
“Night in the Woods,” Brinley said. “Now we just need to find that girl and get her back to the transport vehicle.”
5 Staying and fighting
It was night in the habitat. Lyudmila was waiting. The crickets were chirping. The rustle of animals around the grasses was reassuring. The call of night birds was familiar, yet everything was different. Lyudmila thought of her family, and a few tears rolled down her face.
The woman she had spoken to on the multiceiver had been nice enough, but she did not know her personally at all. Lyudmila tried to use the multiceiver to contact the Governor, but all she got back was static and a blank screen. She then tried to raise the Constable, but then she remembered that she knew the Constable was dead. She repeatedly asked the multiceiver to connect her to the Central Planning Office, but all the machine would do was demand, ‘Enter access code’ which Lyudmila did not know.
And so Lyudmila waited. The horse, she did not know its name and so she called him Serko after a horse she had read about in a child’s storybook, she let graze nearby, the reins tied to a small shrubby bush. The bushes were where Lyudmila had decided to wait and watch. She had ridden Serko through the wooded areas to the grassy fields that surrounded the habitat all along the wall. The grasses stretched out and away into the distance. Lyudmila knew that at the far other end of the habitat was another town, Penza where some people went to university. She had been assigned to work the mill, and now the mill was no more. She remembered the body in front of the mill. Her mind flashed the images of her grandparents.
Lyudmila pushed the thoughts and memories of the horrors she had seen down and away from her mind. The darkness of night helped her with that.
“Lyudmila?” the woman on the multiceiver asked.
“Yes. I am near the four doors where you said I should go.”
“Very good,” Larissa answered. “My friends will be opening those doors shortly and are there to help you.”
“The quarantine is not to be broken,” Lyudmila recited. She had been told that for as long as she could remember. Every child in the Woods knew that.
“These are extraordinary times, Lyudmila. Because of the evils that are there, my friends must break the quarantine to come and help you.” Larissa was patient and careful in what she said.
“They will not bring in the Outbreak will they?” Lyudmila asked.
“I would not allow them to bring something dangerous to you. They are coming to help you. Two noble women and a man. They can be trusted,” Larissa said. She almost said, ‘even the man’ but she restrained herself.
“Then we will go and break those rusalka like rotten eggs,” Lyudmila said.
“They are coming to help you,” Larissa emphasized without revealing that Larissa thought the girl should flee. “I am also sending a squad of automacubes to help.”
Lyudmila was unsure about how gardening machines would help, but did not say anything back to the woman on the multiceiver. The green or brown automacubes were the only ones she had ever seen. She changed the subject instead. “Today will be rain day. That may cause some problems for your friends.”
“Thank you for telling me. They are opening the doors now,” Larissa said.
Lyudmila, whose eyes were well adjusted to the night time, did see the movement by the doors. Those doors were set into the side wall which reached far overhead. At night it just disappeared up into the sky. During the say, one could see the gentle arc of the wall as it bent toward the sky tube. That was seen every day, except on rain-day.
Lyudmila quietly walk
ed a few steps and grabbed the reins for Serko. The horse followed along as she then walked toward where the three people had just entered the habitat. There were a few sparks and a bright flash or two of light as some metal work was done on the doors. Lyudmila had seen metal working many times before, but never at night.
“Are you the friends of Larissa?” Lyudmila asked as she got about twenty meters from the people.
Paul jumped and turned around. A beam of light struck Lyudmila’s face and then outlined the horse.
The Colony Ship Vanguard: The entire eight book series in one bundle Page 146