“The words are smelly!” The Roe cried in pain as the steel rod snapped a rib. The Roe did roll over and try to grab the rod, but now that the flash was gone it was hard to see what it was doing. Only for an instant were its orange eyes open.
Hugh kicked with his free foot and scampered away, trying to escape. The Roe continued to pull at his leg despite his kicking and its own rolling over. He aimed the revolver down, but hesitated in shooting. He was not sure where the Roe was, and was more concerned about hitting Sigmond.
The flashlight beam suddenly lifted up and shined down on the Roe. “I am out of the way!” Sigmond yelled.
Blam! Blam!
Hugh fired the revolver right into the face of the Roe. It let go of his foot as it jerked away.
“That had been a woman,” Hugh said in surprise. He had seen its face in the flashlight beam and in the muzzle blasts. The orange eyes showed it to be a Roe, but its hair and clothing were not what he had expected.
Sigmond pulled on Hugh’s arm and helped him to stand. “We need to move. Tagalongs will be here soon, and this light is not adequate to see where we are going.”
“Tagalongs are rats and other kind of infected animals, right?” Hugh said. “How soon will they be here?”
“They already are!” Sigmond shined the light toward the first Roe, and there was a pair of small, but bright orange eyes peering from atop it. Sigmond poked the tagalong with the end of the steel rod and it rushed away with a squeal. “They are attracted to the noise and now the blood. We have made a mess here, and we cannot fight them off.”
The two men rushed away along the wall they had been following. They could hear squirreling noises coming from the darkness. Most of the orange eyes of the tagalongs were appearing behind them, but a few were in other places as they looked around.
Hugh was feeling the wall with one hand and pointing the revolver with the other. Sigmond was shining the light back and forth. The beam struck across a door set into the wall. The door had ‘ESRC’ written across it.
“Keep watch while I open this up!” Sigmond said and handed Hugh the flashlight. He shined it out and pointed the revolver along that same path. It did not light much up. He could see the small orange eyes skittering around, but did not see anything larger.
“What is in that one?” Hugh asked. He had a rough understanding of the emergency supply rescue cabinets, but most he had seen had been opened and emptied of supplies long ago.
Sigmond snapped the seal on the ESRC and flung the door open. “This will help!”
Two large lights flickered on near the ceiling above the ESRC. Their brilliant glare flooded the area. Both Hugh and Sigmond blinked and shielded their eyes.
“Will the tagalongs flee the light?” Hugh asked as he tried to see past the shock of the brightness.
“Tagalongs seldom flee, but at least we can see what is out there,” Sigmond replied.
They were standing along the sidewall of a storage compartment. Crates were stacked in various places all around. Items were covered with heavy tarpaulins, underneath was machinery of some kind. More startling was the vast sea of tagalong animals which were tussling with each other and rushing toward the two dead Roe. There were rats, and some other rodents, as well as raccoons and a few small pigs.
Sigmond grabbed the remaining items from the ESRC, picked up the steel rod, and looked about.
“There are stairs over there,” Hugh pointed. “I see no other exits.”
“The tagalongs will be busy on those bodies for a while, but not for long. Run for it!” Sigmond ordered.
The two men sprinted across the cargo storage area, Hugh kicked a persistent tagalong out of the way. He did not shoot as he was conserving his ammunition. They dodged and wove and jumped over the items in the way and made it to the stairwell.
“There is another exit far across there,” Hugh gestured just as they made it to the stairway which ascended upward.
Sigmond was trying hard in his mind to figure out where they were, or at least to make a guess as to what the deck plans in the area would be like.
“Honey comes from the bees! Honey comes from the bees!” A Roe called from the exit Hugh had observed. This one was in tattered clothing which was a dull tan color. It had a long scraggily beard, wide frizzled hair, and nasty orange eyes. It shoved the windowed door out of the way making a banging noise as the door struck the wall.
Hugh placed both hands on the revolver and sighted in. He was just about to squeeze the trigger when Sigmond said, “Let it get inside this room more. That way the tagalongs will feed on it and not chase us as much.”
Hugh waited a few anxious moments as the Roe waddled and hobbled forward. It looked like one of its legs had been broken at some time, and had healed incorrectly. It was carrying a club made of some dark brown material.
Blam!
Hugh fired and the Roe’s head exploded. The body dropped down as blood spurted out of where the head had been. The tagalongs rushed over toward it.
“Come on,” Sigmond said as he pulled at Hugh. “I think one level up will be a major causeway. If I am right, a hanger bay is not too far away.”
The men raced up the stairs. At the top, Sigmond went to the door on the landing after he looked upward. Further up it was dark again. Sigmond carefully reached for the door.
“Wait. Let me reload first,” Hugh said.
Sigmond waited. “I have not seen so many infected animals in one place ever before. And three Roe! That is very strange! Great shooting by the way.”
“All reloaded,” Hugh said and nodded toward the door. “Should I open it or do you want to?”
Sigmond held up the rod and reached for the door. “You ready?”
“Yes.”
Sigmond pushed the lever and the door slid into its pocket revealing a causeway which was illuminated by overhead lights. The lights extended to the left for about twenty meters and then were off. The rest of the causeway in that direction was in darkness. To the right, the lights continued to be working, although they were scattered and irregularly spaced. Looking down both ways, there were no Roe in sight and no tagalongs.
“Come on,” Sigmond walked through the doorway followed by Hugh. “I will spot weld this door closed. No use in having those things come up here.” Sigmond pulled the tool kit off his belt and removed the torch he had gotten out of the ESRC. He did a quick bit of metalwork and the door was secured.
Hugh nodded his agreement and the two men walked briskly away. Sigmond was leading the way along where the illumination was working. There were some doorways, but the doors were all closed.
Sigmond held a finger to his lips as he spoke, keeping his voice low, “If this causeway follows the typical style of the decks on the Vanguard, there will probably be a set of elevators not too far in this direction. If those are there, and they should be, that will confirm my idea of what kind of location we have entered.”
“This is all really new to me. I have been in most of the buildings in the Wilds, even the Governor’s palace at Miass, and other buildings and things inside of the Wilds, but these corridors are far longer than any building I have been inside. The engineering here is marvelous,” Hugh replied.
“I am much more comfortable in these kinds of places than in that canyon or in that forest you know so well,” Sigmond answered. “Troopers in habitats, Free Rangers in corridors.”
“Well Free Ranger, it seems one is comfortable in the places where you grow up,” Hugh replied. “The infected ones, those Roe, how much of a threat were they to you when you were young?”
“We had established safe zones around hanger bays. The Roe seldom were much of a bother, and usually only in solos, one at a time,” Sigmond replied. He almost added that the Roe were less of a problem than the Central Planning Office, but he stopped himself. Hugh had saved his life, and Sigmond respected that, even if Hugh was wearing a trooper’s uniform.
“That hall should be were the elevators are,” Sigmond pointed.
“
Let me look,” Hugh said and drew out his firearm. The lights in the hall were out and the causeway light shone down that way only a short distance. So the men approached very cautiously. Peering around the corner, revolver in hand, Hugh looked and assessed what was there.
Sigmond held the rod of steel and was ready.
“I do see an elevator symbol, the blue outline of a hand, and the blue around the edge of what looks like two doors. It is pretty dark, but the glow from those elevators shows there are two automacubes sitting right in front of the elevators. They are engineering models,” Hugh reported.
“That should not be a problem. I will check them out,” Sigmond said and stepped into the hall. “Keep watch for more Roe or tagalongs.”
Sigmond reached the automacubes and neither one had any charge left in their energy reserves. He then waved to Hugh who sprinted over. “Where do we head now?”
“A hanger bay is the best place to find more supplies and take an inventory of our location. That child said we would know the way, and if you notice, the automacubes are sort of blocking our movement through the hallway past here.”
“And the lighting in the ceiling of the causeway did not extend that other direction, and note how it staggers on only a short bit past this hallway?” Hugh pointed down the causeway.
“So we use the elevator,” Sigmond replied. “I think we need to ascend. All that water from the river was going somewhere, and with gravity manipulation in place, it will be below us. Unless there is a GAGS in one of the sections.”
“Gags?” Hugh asked.
“Sorry Trooper, a GAGS is a gravity alteration gimbaled sphere. There are some of those located in places where the directional pull of gravity is required along a different vector.”
“Water will follow gravity unless there is a mechanism to pump it or lift it,” Hugh said. “So I agree we head upward. If you think there is a hanger bay above us and you think that is where we should go.”
“Yes. And good observation on those lights. I think we are being guided somewhere, by someone,” Sigmond said as he placed his hand on the blue hand shaped symbol.
Both elevator doors slid open.
Hugh had the revolver aimed at the right elevator in an instant as he heard the squeals and squeaks coming out of it.
“Those poor souls,” Hugh said as he backed away from that elevator. “I would shoot those bloody beasts if I thought it would help those people.”
“It will only draw more to come here,” Sigmond gestured for them to move as he looked away from the right elevator and into the one on the left.
Once inside, Sigmond smacked the close button and the door slid shut. Both men thought about the sight in the other elevator. The right elevator had contained several nearly skeletonized bodies. Many large, orange eyed rats were sitting among the carcasses and chewing on the exposed bones.
“I am not sure how those infected beasts feed, but in the Wilds a body like that would not have been dead very long,” Hugh said. “Is it the same here?”
“The tagalongs devour everything very quickly. I would say those people died only a short time ago. They could have been Roe, but I saw at least three skulls, and Roe are really solitary. Most of the time anyway,” Sigmond replied. “What we are seeing is very unusual.”
“So again we are directed,” Hugh observed. “This elevator was there as an alternative to the one where those people died.”
“So it seems Trooper. So it does seem,” Sigmond answered. He looked at the inside of the elevator and it was well lit with a column of illuminated buttons down the side of the door frame. “And that is a symbol for a hanger bay.” Sigmond pushed it. “We are closer than I thought.”
The elevator rose smoothly and nearly soundlessly.
Hugh had the revolver ready as the elevator came to a stop. The door slid open. Lights came on and a dusty and musty smell lingered in the air. The men cautiously peered out. There was a short hallway which had medium green colored walls, and lights which ran as a small bar all the way along the corners of the ceiling. The walls on one side had large vertical pipework which was beige colored. The diffuse light was adequate to see that the hallway was empty.
They walked out and headed for the only door in the hallway, a pressure door. On it was a label ‘Supplementary Shuttle Repair Research Evaluations’ in white lettering.
“That is an unusual name for a shuttle bay,” Sigmond stated. “This is a typical pressure door, but I have not seen one this tightly placed near to energy supply channels. Usually they are much further apart in case of problems in the hanger bay. The materials in these pipes are highly combustible, and the shuttles run on fuel that would not mix well with these energy flows.”
“So Free Ranger, is this where we need to be?” Hugh asked. “Or are you lost?”
“I am not lost, Trooper. I am just surprised at the layout. It does not look like other Free Rangers have salvaged this location, so perhaps we will have good luck here?” Sigmond reached out and punched in a security code to the nine section color pad at the side of the pressure door.
The door slid back and revealed an observation deck for the hanger bay. Stepping inside, the door slid shut behind them. The observation deck was about ten meters long and five meters wide. The long side had an entire wall of clear permalloy which allowed them to see into the stalls of the hanger bay. The short end of the deck had another pressure door.
“So that is a shuttle?” Hugh asked as he looked out at what was parked in the stall.
The craft was mostly a flat black color. Its front was long and narrow coming to an almost pin-prick tip. Then looking back, there were three short, sweptback wings in a triangular setting. Those wings were white colored. Slung on those were thruster engines whose nozzles flared to a very wide degree. There were no windows, hatches, or doors. One side of the belly of the craft was folded open and a blue automacubes was working on parts inside of the craft.
“That is not like any shuttle I have ever seen in my life,” Sigmond said in surprise. As he looked he could see three more, each in its own stall, were also parked in the hanger bay. Each had one of more automacubes busy working on them. “They look more like a missile of some kind. I see no place for cargo or people or crew.”
“The automacubes look to be constructing them,” Hugh replied. “Their activity reminds me of when they have put up a new house or a new business center.”
“Trooper, those are not some simple domicile or easy construction. See that one automacube which is spinning out that material? That is new permalloy. And honestly, some of the equipment which they are installing, I cannot identify.”
“You, a Free Ranger, do not know what they are?” Hugh asked.
“I do not, but I am going to find out.” Sigmond walked over to the pressure door which led away from the observation deck. There was a control panel there as well as the color pad. Instinctively he assessed the status of the hanger bay and noted the exterior doors were all sealed, the stalls were pressurized, and the gravity manipulation was rated as ‘Earth Normal’. He entered a security code to the color pad. The pressure door slid open. “That surprises me.”
“That we are allowed in?” Hugh asked. “That just confirms we have been led here, right?”
“Yes, Trooper, that is one way to see it.” Sigmond walked down the stairs and out to the first stall.
“Just what is this craft?” Sigmond asked as he was even more amazed at the complexity and details of the craft by seeing it up close. He did not really expect an engineering automacube to reply.
“These are FTL-1 weapon systems,” a mechanical voice came from the side of them.
The two men turned and saw a red security automacube which had been out of sight behind some thruster fuel storage tanks. “You may not touch it. You are to proceed to the exit through that door.” The manipulation arm on the red automacube pointed to a door at the end of the hanger bay. “Please depart now.”
Sigmond was startled by the words
from the red automacube, but managed to stammer, “A what?” His heart was racing as his memory replayed encounters he had with the red automacubes.
Hugh grabbed him gently by the arm and said, “Free Ranger, I believe we were told to leave. I think that would be wise. Come on.”
“This is advanced technology. Some of these components I do not even recognize,” Sigmond said regaining his composure. He rubbed his hands together. “Maybe the child wanted us to be here for this? To learn about this technology.” He leaned toward the strange black and white missiles.
“Move along,” the security automacube’s mechanical voice said.
Hugh squeezed Sigmond’s arm and they moved away. Overcoming Sigmond’s curiosity was difficult, but he did comply. The red automacube rolled along after them as guide, escort and guard. Not only were the missiles unusual, the equipment all around the hanger bay was modified from what Sigmond knew. Docking clamps were larger and more stout. Thruster funnels were oddly shaped, pipework had been welded and rewelded. Even the exterior doors with their enormous seals and locks were altered in various ways. Sigmond rubbed his eyes as he looked, but the steady pressure of Hugh’s hand pushed him along.
The Colony Ship Vanguard: The entire eight book series in one bundle Page 179