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

by John Thornton

  “I appreciate the lessons. It really is not too different from the basic automacube systems. I have helped repurpose those for the carousels a number of times.” Monika’s voice was pleasant and contented.

  Jerome nearly let lose some sarcastic remark, but held it back. Instead he asked, “Do we have an estimated time for arrival?”

  “Yes,” Eris replied. “A little over three hours from now.”

  Time passed, and Eris took over the controls as the shuttle slipped quickly into the upper atmosphere of the planet. Long streamers of some kind of steam, or sparks, or heat, lit up the night sky and were reflected up into the cabin.

  The darkness of Zalia’s night was in its own way unsettling. Instead of the greens, and deep yellows, which Cammarry and Jerome remembered from their previous flights, the gloom and darkness were thick, almost overpowering. Looking up, the stars were soon gone, as was the flashes of heat dissipating from the bottom of the shuttle.

  “How high up are we?” Cammarry inquired. She spoke it just before Jerome asked the very same question.

  Eris looked over at Monika. Her eyes then went to the cockpit.

  Monika looked at the instruments and responded, “Right now we just passed 6250 meters and descending.”

  “Our equipment is giving us fairly detailed surface features,” Eris stated. “Well, not up-close details, but more than adequate details for safe flight. I plan to have us level off at 1500 meters to make our approach to Delta. There is a small mountain range which we will pass over, and then I will make the final descent.

  “Any contacts with that system in Delta?” Jerome figured that was a safe question.

  “SB Pinaka has been trying to make contact from the needle ship since we departed,” Eris answered. “However, the specific window for those communication avenues is not ideal. I have tried the same method from here, regularly, since we entered the atmosphere, but have not gotten any replies. I will continue to make attempts.”

  “Captain Eris? I detect some activity on the ground. It is in the ultraviolent spectrum, but can be translated into a visual graph. May I display that?” Sandie asked.

  Jerome gritted his teeth at the sweet tones Sandie was using when speaking to Eris.

  “Yes, please,” Eris happily replied.

  The main cockpit display shifted and a map of Zalia showed up. It was in animated form, but showed the topography.

  “The purple marks are the areas of activity which are outside of the human visual spectrum. I have them displayed here for your benefit,” Sandie said.

  “That looks manufactured!” Jerome blurted out. He looked up at the indicator space to see if he had been muted again, but he had not. “Intelligent design?”

  “That was my best conjecture,” Sandie replied. “A network of some kind, with nodes at the junction points.”

  “How close does that go to the Delta site?” Cammarry asked.

  “Only one pathway approaches the location of Habitat Delta. I will mark it with a bold indicator.”

  The one line got brighter.

  “That is a city of some kind,” Jerome stated. “For…” he did not finish.

  “Jerome, that is a valid conjecture. Apparently the natives of Zalia have a municipality, for lack of a precise word, or other structures laid out across the mountain range we are passing. Observations show the structures are underground, and what we are seeing are residual ultraviolet traces which have penetrated the surface. Jerome, it is like a light behind old-style paper. You can see it, but it has become diluted by the intervening medium.”

  “We are about three-hundred kilometers from Delta. Which reminds me,” Eris then said, “Is that where the library is located?”

  “Compiling data,” Sandie answered. “Yes. The orange square is the location give for the library.”

  “Odd that both are in roughly the same place,” Cammarry said. “I wonder what the story is beh…”

  A different voice came though all their spacesuit’s speakers, and through the control cockpit of the shuttle. It was scratchy and static interfered with some of the reception, but the words were recognizable. “Approaching shuttle, this is Artificial Intelligence Ogma. Can you receive my signal?”

  “Yes!” Eris squealed with joy. “You are coming in on an emergency short-range beacon. Where are you?” She quickly adjusted and opened up several other systems on the control panel. “I am activating macroactinide capacitor transponders. I should be able to pinpoint your location. This is great! A Conestoga AI. An active, living, front line, primary system!”

  A burst of static was all that responded. This time the words were not coherent.

  The map on the display screen lit up with flashing lights. Sandie stated, “The location is the same as where we were told the library is.”

  Eris’ fingers flew over the controls. The shuttle banked steeply, and she set it into a spiraling descent.

  The artificial intelligence system, Ogma responded, “…surprised. I will continue….in….. k so you can hone in on my whereabouts.”

  “It must be wreckage, perhaps a section of the habitat too small to detect from orbit,” Cammarry suggested.

  “How is it powered?” Monika asked. “All the synthetic brains in Beta drew immense levels of power, and from what I know of the AIs they were an even bigger draw. The primary reactors in Beta were huge, not like Jerome’s little fusion pack.”

  “Good point,” Jerome added. “We just saw ultraviolent traces of the Crocks, underground. Now please, Sandie, do not shut me down. Listen! Now we have gotten a signal from an AI, but no sign of the habitat for hundreds of kilometers. How can that be?”

  “I am making conjectures,” Sandie replied.

  Smiling from ear to ear, an exuberant Eris said, “I remember that name, Ogma, from training. It is not an engineering AI, but I remember it. Tehisintellekti Toostusharude’s programmers named all the Conestoga’s AIs and SBs during installation. They were pranksters and gave some of our ship’s systems odd names, like for famous mysteries of missing people. Back before launch, I looked up the name Ogma. It was some ancient religion’s deity of languages, or something like that. Suitable for a librarian.” Some lights began to flash on the control panel. “I have the location locked in.”

  “How will we ever land?” Jerome asked. “If there is no hanger bay, or section of wreckage large enough for the shuttle. How will we land? The surface of the planet is inhospitable.”

  Eris ignored the question, even though she knew it was valid and legitimate. As the shuttle flew lower she activated the exterior lighting. Beams of light shot forth from the shuttle, piercing the darkness, and finally lighting up the ground and its bizarre foliage below them.

  “Seriously, I am suspicious,” Jerome stated. “To be suspicious is not a fault. Being suspicious all the time, without making conclusions is the defect. I wonder how a functional AI ended up here? Please do not shut me off, but could this be bait?”

  Eris was still smiling, but not quite as broadly as before. Monika looked back at Jerome and met his eyes. She gave a brief smile of acknowledgement, but then looked away.

  “I hate to admit it, but Jerome may have a point,” Cammarry said. “It does seem really odd, even for Zalia.”

  The shuttle dipped lower still, and slowed to a very low speed as it flew along. The strange Zalian foliage was revealed in the white beams of light: tallish things, which looked organic, in a inexplicable way, with yellowish stalks and maroon colored crowns.

  “That is a forest,” Monika said. “A forest originating from someone’s hallucination, or nightmare, or vision, but it is a forest of some kind of dream trees. And, that is a road of sorts. A roadway through the woods.”

  The four rails, evenly spaced apart, were a dull metallic shade against the taupe and indigo colored ground. The beams of light shone over them, and it was obvious the forest of organic things had been pruned back to allow the four-tracked roadway to pass through.

  “The quad r
ail system,” Eris remembered and almost expected to see to see human letters spelled out on the ground, like she had witnessed when escaping Beta. “Jerome, your Crocks are here.”

  “And other alien life,” Jerome said and pointed at the viewport.

  One of the beams of light was shining down on an oblong floating thing. It was covered in spots of yellows, reds, and greens. It moved out of the light with a quick motion. The beam of light did not follow it as the shuttle proceeded slowly forward.

  “We are the aliens here,” Cammarry said. “This is their home, their world, and we need to remember that.”

  “Echo resonance, and ground mapping lidar, shows there is a cavern system below us,” Sandie stated. “It correlates with the ultraviolent indicators we picked up earlier.”

  “Underground dwellers, in a protected city,” Jerome stated. “Hard to get at. A good defensive system.”

  “The macroactinide signatures are also coming from in there,” Eris pointed. “That is not alien, but Conestoga technology.”

  The light on the shuttle illuminated an irregular, roughly oval shaped opening. The quad rail tracks led into it.

  “AI Ogma?” Eris called out. The shuttle’s systems sent the message.

  “I can hear you clearly now,” Ogma replied. “Please come in, the people are eager to meet you in person.”

  “They moved the survivors of Delta into these caverns,” Cammarry suggested. “Since Delta was ruined, and if they survived the crash, and worked hard, they could have established some type of sheltered spot here. Set up a kind of dome, or survival structure.”

  Jerome was about to object, but his curiosity was piqued. He considered the ramifications. ‘An AI that survived decades on Zalia would know ways to defend against the Crocks,’ he thought, but then looked again at the four rail roadway system, and his mind recoiled, ‘It must be a trap’ and struggled with his conflicting feeling on the issue. He patted the Willie Blaster in his holster, and then stated, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more. When the blast of war blows in our ears, we imitate the action of the tiger.”

  “We are coming, AI Ogma. Tell the people to expect us,” Eris signaled.

  The shuttle’s lights were directed toward the cavern opening. It was perhaps one hundred meters high, and about seventy meters wide. The walls had some odd things dangling down in clumps, and it was unclear what those irregularly shaped items actually were. Monika watched in wonder as the shuttle dipped a bit more and then smoothly entered the cavern.

  “I can switch the enhancers on the viewports to allow you to see in the ultraviolet range,” Sandie stated. “That may give you some improved idea of what the interior of this cave system is about.”

  “Good idea,” Eris replied. “Do it.”

  The viewports discolored a bit, and what had been white beams of light from the shuttle now had a deep bluish tint to them. The dangling items had a yellowish glow about them which increased to nearly a neon gleam at their tips. The dark recesses in the back of the cavern were more visible, and the quad rail system on the ground was more easily seen as it snaked around the twisting passage of the cavern.

  “I cannot see where the people have set up their base, or camp,” Eris stated. “But it must be around behind these turns.”

  Eris gently tapped the thrusters and the shuttle flew around the bend in the cavern.

  Sandie’s voice came on with an urgency in its tone. “SB Pinaka and the lattice of compeers here has lost connection with you. I will attempt to maintain contact with you. However, be advised the Zalian ground causes an interference to our communications. Zalia’s atmosphere consists of approximately 47% nitrogen, 31% chlorine, and 16% of a previously unknown gas which we have been calling stabilizite. The readings of the ground above you show a solid form of stabilizite which interferes with our communications. I am not sure how deep underground you can penetrate before I lose contact with you.”

  “There are people in here, and we must reach them.” Eris adjusted some controls, and the shuttle flew onward.

  Turning beyond several more bends, the cavern’s ceiling and walls were closer, but not a hindrance to the shuttle’s flight. Cammarry was estimating the angles of the turns, and spoke out, “Sandie? Can you hear me?”

  There was no reply.

  “Cammarry? I figured we have jogged out of any direct line of sight or easy bouncing of signals,” Jerome said. “Is that what you were thinking?”

  “Yes. And we now have lost Sandie,” Cammarry replied. “Eris do your instruments tell you anything more?”

  “Mostly just flying by sight now,” Eris replied. “The base cannot be far ahead. AI Ogma? AI Ogma where are you located?”

  “I am just ahead of your location. I have been tracking you,” the artificial intelligence system replied.

  “How can that AI Ogma track us, when Sandie is not able to link here?” Jerome inquired. He was slightly relieved that Sandie could not shut dome his communication now, but he was more concerned about what seemed to him to be irregularities in what the AI Ogma was saying. “If our technology cannot reach in here, how can obsolete, hundred-year-old equipment reach out of here?”

  Cammarry looked through her bubble helmet at Jerome and nodded. She saw the wisdom of his question.

  “The people up here have had since planet-fall to refine that artificial intelligence. AI Ogma has probably been upgraded and they have studied the ground, atmosphere, and found and improvised work-arounds,” Eris stated as she piloted the shuttle around the nearest bend in the cavern. She suddenly pulled up on the thrusters, and the shuttle hovered in place.

  “Those are not people,” Monika stated what was obvious to all of them.

  At the end of the cavern, where its back wall closed off the passage, was a section of the Colony Ship Conestoga’s Habitat Delta. It was a wedge shaped piece of wreckage. Like the petals of a flower, the wreckage had been unfolded, layer by layer, and laid carefully to the sides. In the center of that wreckage was a central memory core, glowing with odd and bizarre colors, not the typical amber of an AI or the blue of an SB.

  Eris switched off the ultraviolet enhancers, and the area again looked, to human eyes, the colors they expected. The central memory core looked to only have bubbling amber fluids, but that was an illusion to the human eye. Eris switched on the enhancers, and yet again the central memory core glowed with bizarre colors.

  “That is just not the way it was designed,” Eris stated.

  “Perhaps the improvised work-arounds?” Monika asked innocently.

  Eris adjusted the viewport optics again. She analyzed what was before her using her engineering skills. Unlike the normal blue fluids of the synthetic brains, artificial intelligence’s central memory core’s fluid was designed to be amber. This one resembled the schematics of a typical AI’s central memory core, as it had seven layers of horizontal brass colored rings. However, two of those rings had been severed, and some unusual, and not human-made equipment, was patched into those rings. Connection cables were at the top and bottom, but not all of those went to the parts of the wreckage. Some of them went to pipes which ran to the back of the carvery and into the wall.

  “That is AI Ogma?” Eris muttered. She prayed silently as she took in the sight. She could not make sense of the foreign components glued onto the Conestoga technology. The middle column of the central memory core showed some cracks, which had been spliced with a greenish plaster of a sort. Eris studied it all, trying to put the schematics in her mind with the sights before her eyes.

  Monika, unlike Eris, was staring at the organic things which were moving, in purposeful motions all around the wreckage. Nearby to the glowing central memory core was a large number of beings, or creatures. Each was basically a cone shape, with a pointy head, and wide mouth. As the mouths opened and closed, teeth were visible. Four round, black, eyes moved independently on each head. Various drapes or robes covered up their bodies, but their four arms, which were set in a horizon
tally square shoulder pattern were visible as they moved them about. The limbs emerged from their clothing by opening in the robes, so the materials were obviously tailored. Their four legs were thick and located below a short trunk in line with the shoulder girdle in a square, horizontal pelvis. They moved with agility, despite their squatty appearance.

  “The Crocks?” Monika asked.

  “Yes, those are the Crocks!” Jerome’s anger welled up in him. “Look what they did to that part of the ship!”