The Colony Ship Conestoga : The Complete Series: All Eight Books

by John Thornton

  “Khin?” Jerome asked. He looked hard. The coloration seemed about right, the size and shape of the person were about the same as Khin’s. “He is too far away to tell for sure. I just do not know. It might be Khin!”

  “Might be?” Cammarry turned and glared at Jerome. “It is Khin! I know it is!”

  Jerome looked again. “I cannot be sure.”

  Cammarry slapped Jerome hard across the side of his face. “It is Khin! Why do you refuse to see it! Look at reality for once!”

  Holding his stinging face, he stepped away. Jerome’s eyes looked from Cammarry back to the view outside. “I… We are too far away. I am not sure it is Khin. I just do not know!”

  The man from the vat stood up and shook his head from side to side. Several wires were sticking out from his head, and there was a gold colored mechanical box jutting from his back. His eyes were covered by some kind of filter-like hood or something. He reached over his head and tried to yank at the box, but he was unable to reach it. He turned and twisted around trying to grab at the implants which had been surgically placed into his body. His chest heaved and sighed as he tried to breathe the poisonous air of the planet. He clawed at his face, his nose, and his mouth.

  “It is Khin, and you do not care at all.” Cammarry folded her arms across her breast. “Poor Khin, poor poor Khin.”

  “No matter who that is, SB Premenit, you must cease this now!” Jerome ordered. “Recover that man! Bring the biological materials back inside now!”

  “Unable to do so. Testing in progress.” The synthetic brain responded.

  “It is Khin! I know it is,” Cammarry muttered.

  “Recovery of that person is required for repairs!” Jerome yelled. “Repairs can only start when you bring him back inside. Do it now!”

  “Unable to comply with request. No available recovery process in place. Testing continuing. I can shut down the line before the next test if that is required for repairs.”

  “Shut it all down now! Find a way to bring that man back inside before he dies!” Jerome rushed to the control workstation took a seat and began looking at the myriad of controls, levers, buttons, knobs, gauges, dials, and displays.

  “Unable to recover biological materials once deployed in testing,” SB Premenit replied. “Project Angel Food on temporary hold until repairs completed. Expedite repairs.”

  “Not good enough!” Jerome yelled. “Get that automacube to bring him back inside now!”

  “Unable to recover biological materials once they are deployed in testing,” SB Premenit repeated. “Armored automacube, AA-005 does not have access to interior, it is designed for exterior use only. No recovery process in place.”

  Cammarry walked slowly to the bowed window and watching helplessly as the man stumbled about in agony. “Khin, I am sorry I failed you.”

  It was a graphic, gut-wrenching, and horrific seven minutes to watch.

  After countless flailing around and writhing in agony, the man’s body fell into one of the gray pool of fluids. He lay face down and still. Vapors steamed up from his body. SB Premenit commented. “Failure number 10,987. Information gathered and compiled. Integration into next generation of biological materials. Begin repairs immediately, so Project Angel Food can commence as quickly as possible.”

  Jerome dropped his head into his hands. “This is nonsense! Garbage! These are all manual overrides, but I cannot tell for what. There is damage to the circuits and system. I tried turning everything off…. I do not know what good it did. Except for the water flow system, nothing is labeled or marked. I shunted what was labeled as main water aqueduct back to the biome, but who know? If Sandie was here….” He sobbed deeply. He fumbled for the com-link over his ear. He pulled the cable from that an inserted it into the access port. “Sandie! Please hear me! I need your help! I redirected the water back to the biome. Sandie? Sandie tell me! Was that really Khin?”

  “Of course it was Khin!” Cammarry said. “You just refuse to recognize it. We just saw Khin die and did nothing.”

  Jerome spun several of the dials and levers to the off position. “I shut everything down I could. I tried! I tried! If Sandie could interface…” He looked at the cable connecting the com-link to the access port. “Sandie could have reversed this. Was that really Khin?”

  There was no response from Sandie, there were hours left to go until the next contact widow opened.

  “Machine Maintenance man, what are you doing?” SB Premenit asked. “You will begin proper repairs immediately.”

  “You know that was Khin,” Shadow said to Cammarry. “Jerome is lying, but you know it was Khin. Jubal was right, you are unfit. Your friend died because of your incompetence. Dome 17 was breached because you were to slow. Who will die next because of you?”

  “Shut up!” Cammarry pulled out the Willie pistol and yelled, “Here are your repairs!”

  Piff. Piff. Piff. Piff.

  Cammarry had the pistol set to its highest energy and velocity setting. Those extremely fast projectiles struck into the largest of the central memory cores with devastating momentum and power. Steam hissed out from a severed pipe. Sparks flew out from ripped up wiring. A conduit broke loose, and thick gunk dripped from a shattered valve. The clear permalloy itself was dented and chipped.

  “Cease violent action!” SB Premenit commanded. “Cease immediately!”

  Sirens wailed and red lights flashed. Cammarry fired the pistol repeatedly at the pressure door as it tried to slide closed.

  Piff. Piff. Piff. Piff.

  The impact of the projectiles bent the frame and the door jammed with an angry hiss. It was a third of the way open.

  Synthetic brain Premenit called out, “You are not from Machine Maintenance! You are insurrectionists! You are jeopardizing the mission of the Conestoga! Stop all violence immediately!”

  “No,” Cammarry said. She calmly turned and again fired the pistol into the large central memory core.

  Piff. Piff. Piff.

  She fired again and again. The impacts drilled into the brass rings until one of them split. That crack then worked its way around the pylon.

  A large flash of flame jetted out from the cracked ring. It licked the ceiling and charred everything it its path. Melted wiring dropped to both sides of Premenit’s central memory core. The flame was so bright Cammarry shielded her face with her hand. The pistol continued to fire, this time the projectiles bored through the control boards, near where the distraught Jerome was weeping. Shaking back to what was happening, Jerome threw himself down to the deck to escape the barrage of weapon’s fire. The com-link roughly pulled from off his ear remaining on the countertop.

  Something exploded behind the control board, shaking the whole side of the room and popping the gauges out. Their wrecked mechanisms falling onto the cracked countertop. A second detonation happened behind the board. Some of the instruments flew out. Broken pieces of splintered gadgets were thrown in all direction. Flames licked up from the wreckage.

  “Cammarry stop!” Jerome yelled as he covered his head with his hands, the rain of fractured devices and shrapnel falling around him.

  The smell of burnt circuits permeated the room, and both humans smelled it. The power systems faltered and lights flickered, and both sets of human eyes observed it. The sizzle and whirr of air filters clicked up several notches in a futile attempt to compensate for the fried connecter junctions. The human ears of Jerome and Cammarry heard those snapping, popping, and crackling sounds.

  A warbling whine came from somewhere and the illumination in the area dimmed, and then flickered off. Smoke rose from the burning components of the control board. The smoke curled around the top of the room and filled the air with an acrid, pungent stench. Flashing red lights punctuated the room with a glare. A security screen dropped into place and the bow shaped clear permalloy window was covered. The green glow from outside was gone.

  A different mechanical voice, obviously recorded, came from above. “Security has been summoned. All pe
rsonnel to emergency stations. Security has been summoned. All personnel to emergency stations.”

  “Shut up! I am sick of disembodied voices telling me what to do!” Cammarry regained her footing and aimed the pistol back at the memory cores. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!!!”

  Piff. Piff. Piff.

  The memory cores were pulverized by the weapon. Premenit’s was leaking amber fluid from the central column, where numerous cracks and fractures had happened. The brass colored rings were shredded, the diamond shape at the center of the pylon was whirling in an uncoordinated manner.

  Piff. Piff. Piff. Piff.

  The other three memory cores were pounded by repeated impacts. The nearest small memory core listed to the side and flames ignited around it. The amber fluid that was leaking out as it combined with other fluids ruining down from ruined pipework. Some of those were flammable and flames fluttered and sparked and danced in the damaged equipment. The pyre roared in heat and in noise.

  A mechanical voice screamed incoherently. A wailing synthetic tortured verbalization of the physical destruction.

  Another of the small memory core’s brass colored rings dripped as they melted in the heat. This caused that unit to implode as a vortex at the diamond shaped center sucked in all around it, and crushed it. The scorching was severe.

  The last one was vibrating and oscillating, the bubbles in its fluid shaken into tiny spheres which were slamming against the permalloy. Wires, and pipes were stretching and falling away from it.

  “Why? Why? Why?” A synthetic brain wailed from that last memory core. “Why?”

  Piff. Piff. Piff. Piff.

  “Shut up! No more talking to me! No more!” The hysteria in Cammarry’s voice exceeded that of the dying synthetic brains.

  Leaping to his feet, Jerome grabbed Cammarry by her shoulders and dragged her toward the partially open door. “We leave this inferno now!” He yelled as his physical strength overpowered her.

  “I must shut them all down!” Cammarry bawled as she was pulled through the doorway. “They killed Khin! They are insane!”

  Jerome wrestled her out the door, and slammed his fist into the color control pad on the outside of the door. Cammarry pulled away from him. There was a negative function sound from the door. The pressure door shook in its frame but did not close completely.

  “Cammarry! Come on! We need to escape!” Jerome urged.

  Cammarry swung around and aimed the pistol toward Jerome. Her eyes were wild. Her pupils huge. Her lips drawn tight. He ducked and heard the weapon fire at the same time.

  Piff. Piff.

  “What are you doing?” Jerome yelled as he looked up from the floor.

  Cammarry nodded.

  Jerome looked behind him and saw a blue automacube which was rocking back and forth on its drive wheels from the projectiles slamming into its front. Its manipulation arm spun about and the fire suppression nozzle drooped. Fluids dripped and flowed out from its punctured chassis.

  “This place must be destroyed.” Cammarry spun about and darted down the line of vats. She was pulling off her backpack as she ran.

  Jerome looked back from the wrecked automacube to see Cammarry running. “Cammarry! Where are you going?” He hesitated as he stood up. The smoke was billowing from the room he had just left and getting thicker. He went after Cammarry.

  A second blue automacube rolled hurried along past the disabled one, and up to the doors. It began forcing them closed as it sprayed fire retardant foam into the room.

  Cammarry dug the molecular torch out of the backpack as she ran. It was clumsy, holding the weapon in one hand, and getting the torch out with the other, but she did it. “I will set them all free! I must set them free!”

  Connecting the molecular torch to the fusion pack, she slipped the backpack back on. Igniting the torch she approached the nearest vat. The person inside it was no older than ten years, and was wide eyed as she floated in the yellowish-green liquid. Cammarry set the torch on the top of the vat, its cutting blade biting into the vat and neatly slicing it as she drew down and around in a circle. The liquid came bursting out, just as the loud clanking and clanging started indicating the vats were moving.

  “Youch!” Cammarry yelled as some of the liquid splashed onto her hand. It both felt hot and extremely cold at the same time. Her fleshed bubbled a bit. It was the same arm which had been injured in her incident at the ESRC. She dropped the molecular torch as she jerked her hand away. The torch fell with a sizzle into the pouring flood of yellowish-green vat fluid. The torch sparked as it shut down. She yanked on the cable, and a ruined end of it snapped off the torch. Cammarry unplugged it from her fusion pack and threw it away.

  As the vat drained, the girl inside struggled against the cords, wires, and devices holding her in place. When her head emerged from the liquid, she took some gasping breaths and wailed in pain and anguish.

  “Air! Hurts!” the girl cried. Her body jerked in a massive spasm and ripped itself from the devices holder her in. She fell to the bottom of the vat and then slumped out of the hole Cammarry had cut in the side of it.

  “You are free now!” Cammarry said hopefully through tears as she realized the futility of the comment.

  The girl was turning blue as she gulped air, which caused her immense pain. Metallic struts paralleling her bones poked out through the skin as her legs kicked and shuddered. Then the girl fell backwards into the liquids which were spreading across the floor. Her lips quivered as she gasped and groaned and trembled.

  Cammarry looked over as Jerome approached.

  The vats shifted position and moved again. The one the girl fell from twisted away.

  “I cannot save them,” Cammarry said. She looked down at the fluids which were steaming and giving off foul odors, as well as the dead girl’s body which had been pushed to the side by the moving vat train.

  “We need to get away from here.” Jerome tried not to look at the body, nor at the long line of other people who were trapped in the vats. He saw the acidic burns to Cammarry’s hand. “You are injured. Let me help you.”

  “Emergency alert. Emergency alert. All personnel clear the area. Venting to extinguish fire will commence in three minutes.” A new and recorded voice boomed out over the terraforming area.

  The line of moving vats shifted a different way, and all of them rotated inwardly and locked into place with a firm clack.

  “Emergency alert. Emergency alert. All personnel clear the area. Venting to extinguish fire will commence in less than three minutes.”

  “I said shut up! All of you shut up!” Cammarry screamed at the ceiling and fired the pistol upward.

  Jerome rushed at her to grab the weapon, but she side-stepped away. “You leave me alone! You are in it with all the others!”

  “Cammarry, I came all this way with you. We are in this together. Come on and leave with me now. We must get away!” Jerome held out both hands to her.

  She looked back and saw that the second blue automacube had failed to seal the door where she had destroyed the central memory cores. The inferno of flames was spreading out from there, deep black smoke was billowing out and collecting all around the high ceiling of the chamber. Despite the engineering automacube spraying a steady steam of fire retardant, the dancing red and orange flames were engulfing the blue machine. The heat was so intense its wheels were dripping and its mechanisms were frying.

  Warning sirens wailed. Red lights flashed a rapid warning.

  Cammarry looked at Jerome.

  “He is who caused all this,” Shadow said to Cammarry. “He was at those controls. He could have saved Khin. Shoot him.”

  “No!” She whirled around and around flailing her arms and randomly firing the weapon. “I said shut up! All of you shut up! Be silent! I cannot take any more!”

  Several shots from the Willie pistol blasted into ductwork in the ceiling and that came crashing down. More gases entered the chamber, and more sparks flickered up from different areas.

&n
bsp; “Cammarry, I am here for you and always will be. Put down the weapon and we will leave together. Please! Please!” Jerome carefully reached out to her. “Put down the weapon.”

  Cammarry turned to Jerome and glared at him. “You never believed me! It was Khin! You are like the rest of them, just ordering me around!” She bolted away.

  A passage in the wall opened up, and three white automacubes came rolling right at Cammarry, their manipulation arms extended toward her.

  “Look out!” Jerome called a warning and ran toward her.

  Two of the machines grabbed Cammarry, seizing her wrists with a vice-like grip. One automacube restraining each arm. They lifted Cammarry off her feet as they barreled away. Their drive wheels spinning madly. Her hand still held the pistol and she kept firing it wildly.