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

by John Thornton

Blam, blam, blam, blam.

  Brinley was firing her handgun at the red automacube. The bullets were striking directly into its armor, but were deflected away with ringing noises. “I cannot hurt that thing with this.”

  The red automacube redirected its fire toward where Brinley was located, and several projectiles smacked into the pipework. They caused massive dents and cracks in the pipes.

  Gretchen looked at the pistol in her hand, and adjusted it to maximum intensity. She then sighted and fired.

  Piff, piff.

  The first shot blew off the front two wheels of the red automacube and a shower of debris sprayed onto the footbridge. The machine spun sideways, as the second shot smacked into it. The high speed pellet cut though the armor, ripped apart the internal mechanisms, and then struck the other side of the automacube. It did not have sufficient residual force to penetrate that other side armor, so the pellet bounced around inside the machine destroying everything it touched.

  Oomph!

  There was an explosion inside of the red automacube which caused it to lift off the deck and then fall back. Its forward muzzles shot out sparks and flame, signs of its internal conflagration, as its own inventory of munitions ignited.

  Brinley sprinted over to the white automacube. “How badly damaged are you?”

  Zoya ran up the stairway and leaped past the charred red automacube.

  Paul finally got his handgun out, but had nothing to shoot at.

  Gretchen had her pistol trained on the place where the hallway to the pressure door was. Nothing was moving there, but she was ready to shoot the next thing that came into sight.

  Brinley pulled the white automacube over and righted it and repeated her question. “How badly damaged are you?”

  The weak mechanical voice replied, “Self assessment underway…. Power systems failing…. Drive system destroyed…. Manipulation system destroyed….”

  “Brinley!” Zoya yelled. “Recover the memory vault! We can swap it into this blue one!”

  “I am not… an engineering… automacube…” Doctor 147 replied.

  “Just do it! We must find my momma!” Zoya yelled. “I already pulled the memory vault from this one.”

  “Doctor 147, I gave you free will,” Brinley said. “I give you this choice. I will respect your wishes.”

  “Brinley, just do it. It is only a machine!” Zoya yelled down.

  “I can make…. no conjectures… on my abilities….in an engineering… setting. However….it is the only….reasonable hope… for finding… mother. You have my permission,” Doctor 147 replied. “Thank you.”

  Brinley’s hands were a blur of activity as she rapidly disassembled the white automacube. It was difficult to get through some of the damaged areas. She did get the memory vault out and started up the stairs with it.

  “Your breath smells like peaches!” a voice called from the doorways at the corner of the room. A tall Roe was standing there holding a club in its hands. It had once been a male, as seen by the long gray beard. It wore the remains of a coat made from some kind of animal skin. Its bright orange eyes were blazing in hatred. Its legs and feet were bare, but horribly scarred. “Your breath smells like peaches!”

  The Roe lifted the club and jerkily came toward them.

  “No way!” Paul said and fired his handgun at the Roe.

  Blam! Blam! Blam!

  The second shot struck the Roe in the chest and it toppled over backward.

  “You hit it?” Gretchen said as she turned to shoot it herself.

  “I did?” Paul said in amazement. “I really did!”

  Brinley squatted next to Zoya who had disabled the blue machine and had its back apart. The lattice connections were savagely severed by Zoya’s work, as were some of the restraining fractals and molecular sequencers, but the position for the memory vault was open and ready. The old memory vault was lying on the deck, discarded with wires and cables hanging from it.

  “How did you access the blue’s systems? It should have retreated when you approached?” Brinley asked.

  “I know a few tricks of my own. I saw Doctor 147 was kaput, but this should save the information for where we need to go,” Zoya said.

  “Maybe,” Brinley replied. “I hope it saves more than just the information.”

  Brinley inserted the memory vault, and then modified the connections to make the medical memory vault interface with the engineering automacube’s carriage. “Tagalongs will be coming soon, if Paul really did kill that Roe.”

  “He did. It saw it go down,” Zoya said. “Will this work?”

  “Inchoate systems operational. That is a good sign. It was your idea and now you ask me if it will work?” Brinley gave her a smile as she finalized the connections and activated the blue automacube. “I have programmed it to use whatever possible information available to locate your mother. I saw the conjectured DNA sequences. I also programmed it secondarily to lead us to External Repair Station V-2210. I did not have time to make it more detailed or specific. It will have a ‘HALT’ and ‘PROCEED’ button on its display screen. No voice activations, at least I do not think so. This is such a rush job, I am not sure what we might get from this concoction of machines.”

  “Oh sweet, we have rats now,” Paul said cynically. “Orange eyed rats, and lots of them. They are coming from our exit.”

  “Up the stairs,” Gretchen commanded.

  “That AI is the only thing up there,” Paul stated.

  “Yes, and those infected rats are down here. Go up!”

  Gretchen and Paul ran up the stairs.

  “I need to check something.” Gretchen ran back toward the pressure door to assess what was happening there. Ever since she shot the red automacube, she had been expecting another attack from that direction, probably by people. She peered around the corner and looked. The pressure door was shut again, although it was clear where the pneumatic hammer-jack had forced the door open. It was now shut and resealed. New blister welds were visible along the seam made from the habitat side. No one would be coming in or out this way anytime soon.

  Brinley had activated the modified blue automacube. It spun in place, first clockwise, then counterclockwise. The appendage on its top swiveled and extended and contracted. Then the display screen on its top showed the two buttons Brinley had programmed into it.

  The infected rats were swarming over the body of the dead Roe devouring it bite by bite. There were some other larger animals also ripping chucks from the dead Roe. Those animals were unfamiliar to Paul and Gretchen.

  Zoya pushed the ‘PROCEED’ button.

  The blue automacube rolled down the stairway and was ignored by the infected animals which were milling about all around the stripped carcass of the Roe. It approached the hulk of the white automacube. Using its manipulation arm, and the many tools it carried, the blue automacube removed several parts from the white machine’s carriage. It then modified itself with those same parts.

  “What is it doing?” Paul asked. “We need to get out of here.”

  “Those are gaseous sensors which it has installed on itself. I suspect Doctor 147 is enhancing the blue automacube’s abilities so as to complete the programming on the memory vault,” Brinley replied. “It will use those to track Zoya’s mother.”

  “Is that really Doctor 147?” Paul asked.

  “I hope so, but honestly, I am not sure what we have made,” Brinley replied.

  The blue automacube now had several large intake vents, which were white, slung under its carriage. They looked very out of place, but were roughly in the same position as they had been on the white automacube. On the white one they had been internal with only the intake grill showing, but on the blue machine they were mounted externally.

  Instead of going across the rat infested deck and toward the exits, like they expected and feared it would do, the blue automacube rolled back toward the stairway and climbed up. It then passed the people who were watching and headed toward the ramp which led to TSI-4588C5
and the air circulation control room.

  “That machine is not working correctly,” Paul said. “There is nothing back there but that AI which tried to trap us.”

  Paul was still standing at the top of the stairs, but Brinley and Zoya had followed the blue machine as it rolled around the ledge and back toward where the ramp was now closed.

  “No one will be following, except for those infected rats, and those other creatures down there,” Gretchen informed Paul as she returned. “They are finishing the Roe’s body, and will come after us.”

  “So we have no way out,” Paul complained. “Just great.”

  They ran to catch up to Brinley and Zoya. The blue automacube had stopped where the ramp had lifted up into the ceiling. It pulled out a cable and jacked into a port on the wall. A light came on which outlined a rectangle in the wall. That section of the wall then rotated ninety degrees revealing a passage which none had suspected was there.

  “It might be a trap,” Paul said.

  “Do we really want to stay with those infected animals or that adversarial AI?” Gretchen gave him a smile. “Besides it is illuminated well in there, and the automacube found it for us. “Thanks Doctor 147.” Gretchen patted the blue automacube in its top as she entered the corridor which had been revealed.

  14 phoenix dominie is watching

  The blue automacube with the number 8 on its side, which now was a puppet to Phoenix Dominie, had encountered three other automacube and converted them into service to Phoenix Dominie. There were now additional automacubes serving the master: one orange, one gray, and one yellow. To all outward appearances, they looked do different, but they were different, very different. In a way, they were all newly made nodes of the alternative mini-lattice.

  After making those conversions, the blue puppet automacube was plugged into an access port by its cable. It was probing the nonphysicality and monitoring activity. When it discovered items of interest to its master, it would report back via the alternative mini-lattice which Phoenix Dominie, had created. The couplings and links it made to do so were exceedingly surreptitious.

  Governor Larissa was monitored. She and the newly appointed Constable Brock were still sending engineering automacubes on missions to restore the Vanguard’s external communications systems, which in term meant that the Vanguard’s limited deflector projector turrets could be used against shuttles. The controls and use of the projector turrets was too high a priority for the automacube to penetrate or interfere with, but it could report. The blue puppet also monitored the progress, locations, and activity of those engineering automacubes as they followed Governor Larissa’s agenda. All this was relayed to Phoenix Dominie for its consideration.

  Governor Larissa was also receiving updates on the locations of two individuals, though a system which was neither authorized, nor initiated from the Central Planning Office. This was unique and special so it was flagged for further evaluation and monitoring.

  Then messages from some humans communicating inside F Habitat: Prairie/Pampas were intercepted. They stated things like: ‘Smuggler activity detected’ and ‘breach of quarantine suspected’. The puppet automacube focused attention on those reports and was becoming adept at obscurity its observations, and was diligent at furtiveness in gathering information. It also intercepted, recorded, and relayed, but did not disturb, conversations between Governor Zlata and a worried and nervous, Constable Jeffry.

  Governor Zlata strongly insisted upon sending automacubes into the spaces outside of the habitat. Her actions were the direct result of commands from the Central Planning Office. Constable Jeffry hesitantly agreed and dispatched a blue engineering automacube and a red security automacube.

  The blue puppet reported those activities. A special note was made regarding the fact that the location from which the Central Planning Office had issues commands to both Governor Zlata and to Governor Larissa were in the same location and over similar methods of communication: multiceiver conversations. The blue puppet monitored what transpired next. The nonphysicality was busy with unusual activity.

  First, an artificial intelligence system, TSI-4588C5 issued a series of reports, with a focus on External Repair Station V-2210. The Central Planning Office replied via Security Oversight.

  Second, the security automacube dispatched by Constable Jeffry reported ‘engaging hostile targets’ and then abruptly ceased to function.

  Third, shortly after the security automacube’s demise, the engineering automacube accompanying it reported massive system disruption and then failed to report again.

  Constable Jeffry duly reported what had happened, and Governor Zlata did not insist on follow-up missions into ‘the unsecured sections of the ship’ using the phrasing Constable Jeffry had stated.

  Governor Zlata then communicated with the Central Planning Office over what she thought was an invulnerable link. The blue puppet recorded all of that interaction.

  Every bit of data was relayed through the nonphysicality of the mini-lattice, back to Phoenix Dominie.

  Phoenix Dominie processed the information. Then it made conjectures on various options. It considered various approaches and uses of the information. It did not have full comprehension of all the variables, and so it monitored, it planned, and it waited.

  “This unit will protect the Vanguard,” Phoenix Dominie affirmed to itself. “The Vanguard must be protected. This includes both the Free Ranger threat and the Central Planning Office threat. The Vanguard must be protected. Common to both threats is the human element. Processing implications on possible removal of the common element.”

  It then dispatched orders to its growing army of converted automacubes, its puppets. Some of those newly possessed puppet automacubes were sent to the location of External Repair Station V-2210.

  15 labyrinth

  “So is that machine still Doctor 147 or not?” Paul asked as they followed it along the corridor. It had shut the rotating door after all had entered.

  “The automacube’s memory vault was exchanged, and I did program some basic tasks, but I am not sure if you can call it Doctor 147 anymore. It does not have adequate audio interaction capabilities. I have never tried placing a wrong fitted memory vault into a different type of automacube. Honestly, Paulie, I did not think it would function at all.”

  “It is leading us to my momma,” Zoya stated. Her confidence sounded high, and Paul wondered about how she could feel confident in such a situation.

  After leaving the compartment where the rotating door was located, the hallway, if you could call it that, was illuminated adequately, but oddly with ceiling lights about every ten meters. The lights were on downward projections of permalloy which crossed the passage. Running between those lights, and secured to the ceiling, were tubes which glowed a bluish color and cast that color on the walls and floor as well. Along each side, at the base of the walls and floor were sections of permalloy mesh set into the floor. The deck itself was slightly warped, intentionally planned it appeared, so that there was a rise in the center of the corridor and a slight slope down to each sidewall where the openings in the mesh were set.

  The ceiling was low, and Gretchen, being the tallest of the group, had to duck her head to avoid hitting the suspended ceiling lights. There were tubular pipes or ducts which ran parallel to the floor at the upper corners of the walls, connecting into the ceiling and branching every so often.

  “I have never seen a passage like this,” Brinley stated. “I have been in lots of types of places on this ship, yet this is new to me.”

  “The light is annoying to my eyes,” Paul said.

  “I do not think the light is there for human purposes,” Zoya stated. “This passageway reminds me of a mechanical part, not a place for people. I think some large amounts of fluid are transported through here at times.”

  “That would be consistent with the drains along the sides, and the slope of the floor,” Brinley commented. “Maybe that will mean this area is also free from Roe?”

/>   “Let us hope so,” Paul replied.

  “But Paulie, your aim was good on the last one,” Brinley teased.

  Paul reddened a bit due to her praise.

  The automacube rolled ahead of them as they followed the passageway which did not have corners as much as gentle curves which seemed to confirm the notion that fluids flowed in there at times.

  Brinley kept checking the display on the modified automacube. The ‘PROCEED’ button continued to be lit, indicating it was following her hastily imputed programming.

  After one long curve of the passageway, they came to a section where the ceiling was elevated and had large circular double doors in it about ten meters off the deck.

  “I certainly wish Tiffany could see this,” Paul lamented. “Then we could have an explanation of what this place is. I keep worrying about being here. If this place did channel fluids, then when will that happen again?” He looked at the large double doors in the ceiling. “If those are spouts for the fluids, who is to say when they will open up and pour stuff down on us. I have seen more water here on the Vanguard than I saw in my whole life at Dome 17.”