“Well, there is no blood in here,” Gretchen observed.
“And only one paddle,” Brinley added.
“The way it was bashed about, I am surprised anything is in it. I think rain day is tomorrow, so we should turn it over, otherwise it might wash back into the sea,” Paul stated.
“So do I use it now to row out and get that larger boat?” Brinley asked.
“I could not protect you from the shore. That other boat is way too far out there. Do you really want to go out there and get it?” Gretchen asked.
“If you want to search for Klara, we need a bigger boat. I would also like to talk to some of the remaining Free Rangers, before you do. There must be another way into this habitat.”
“Sure there is,” Paul replied sarcastically. “You can cut open a door, which someone sealed decades ago for safety. Then just stroll through a maze of hallways, stairs, elevators, and corridors where infected animals roam. While you enjoy your leisurely walk, try to avoid the Roe. You know, the folks with bright orange eyes, and violent tendencies? If you get hurt we have no healing technology anymore, so you will probably get ripped apart, dismembered, and have your skull caved in, all while some infected person spouts gibberish at you. That is the other way in.”
“Paulie, you make it sound dangerous,” Brinley chided. “There might be another passage which Free Rangers have cleared and secured. “They did not go away in shuttles, as none are flying. They did not use the old transport tube system, as Tennard and I are the only ones who know the access code to get to TSI-981. So where did they go?”
“Suicide?”
“Paul, Brinley is correct.” Gretchen ignored Paul’s comment. “We need to do a search. We need to get reconnected to Tiffany. We need another medical kit. The scout ship is the place for that. I do not know the way back to the scout ship. You do not know the way. We cannot take a shuttle. But Klara claimed to have a map. So do we search for her?”
“How about we check that secret door the children found? That would keep us away from the water anyway,” Paul said.
“Paul, I saw that on the way here. I was rushing to help you so only briefly looked. It is a standard pressure door. I can easily get us in there,” Brinley stated.
“Yes, I know. ‘No door can keep you in or out.’ What we might find behind there, that is what concerns me. However, it seems the least dangerous place to begin the search. I would like to know why it was hidden and since we live on top of it, maybe it will be something helpful. Does it connect to the freight lift?” Paul asked.
“We will find out. I have all the tools I need, and you two now have the weapons. Do you need anything else?” Brinley replied.
“I need a case of food ration bars, a dozen working data sticks, and a teleporter to take me somewhere that is not filled with vicious animals, or killers, or violent Governors, of Constables,” Paul stated flatly. “But to check out the door, I am good. You Gretchen?”
“I am ready as well. We are in this together.”
The three of them walked toward the waterfall and the newly discovered door.
6 The search is on
“I was not sure what all we would need, so I also grabbed some food and water containers,” Brinley said as they stood before the place where the rocks had shifted to reveal the short passage to the pressure door.
“Thanks,” Gretchen replied. “Any idea what is behind here? To me the pressure door looks like the other permalloy pressure doors we have seen. It is not as thick as a bulkhead door, but solid. The color panel is powered; well at least it is lit up. The children knew right where it was, and somehow got the rocks to move out of the way. I would have never suspected a passage was back here.”
“Be careful to not shut the rock façade,” Brinley said as she looked at it carefully. “There is an identification scanner inside here. It reads implanted chips. I do not have one, neither do either of you. So those children were marked as part of this habitat. They were born in this habitat and marked by the Constable as babies. Of course, I could put together a fake chip and trick the scanner, but neither of you have the tools to do that.”
“So those marks on the habitat people have imbedded chips? Does that allow them to roam about freely in the habitat? Or does that let their Constable and Governor track them down? Remember we were chased down by Larissa.” Paul was frustrated. “Did those children touch either of us? Did they leave something here so some red automacube can come and slaughter us? Did they do their job and then get eliminated by that thing I saw? Were they just pawns to be sacrificed to get to us?”
Brinley pulled out a small item from her tool belt. “After our experiences, I modified my diagnostic scanner to not only pick up radiation, but also to search for trace elements, habitat chips, and anything else I could think of. Let me do a quick scan on you both. I mean, well, it might be paranoid, but those children coming here was rather odd and they are dead now. It might just be some bizarre coincidence, but who knows, right Paulie?”
Brinley carefully used the modified diagnostic scanner which was only a bit larger than her thumb. It did have an added attachment from the one Paul had seen previously. She took it over all of Paul’s body as well as Gretchen’s.
“Do I need to take off my clothes?” Paul asked.
“No, this will look right through all that. I designed it to work that way. I detect nothing on either of you. So those children did not plant anything on you. Now about that pressure door,” Brinley walked over and assessed it carefully.
“This has not been opened for a long, long time. It is a typical pressure door, and has no labeling. So are we ready to see what is behind here?”
Gretchen pulled out the Willie pistol and nodded.
Paul pulled out the handgun he carried. “If there is a Roe back there, that will make this already bad day much worse.” He too nodded.
Brinley entered a typical pressure door access code.
The door buzzed with a negative function.
“Rarely is it that easy,” Brinley commented. “I will use an override code.”
“If there is only vacuum behind there, will it open?” Paul asked.
“No. The safety protections are all operational, as far as I can tell. So the pressure door will remain shut if the conditions on the other side are outside of established parameters.”
“Are Roe outside of parameters?” Paul said sarcastically.
“There were no Roe when the safety parameters were programmed. I too wish there was a way to predict where the Roe will appear.” Brinley entered the override code.
Again the door buzzed with a negative function warning.
“I will try an emergency engineering override,” Brinley wrinkled her lips as she pressed the colors on the nine section pad.
“Access granted.” The words scrolled across a permalloy section of the pressure door.
“That is unusual,” Brinley stated as she stepped back while the pressure door very slowly slid into the pocket of the wall. “Not all doors have built-in display units.”
“Maybe I should have just asked the door, ‘What is this place?’ or ‘Is it safe here?’ since it is such a smart door,” Paul said as he watched. The door had now opened fully and lights were flickering on revealing a large area. It was like a cavity surrounded by rock, but reinforced with permalloy struts, mounts and bracing. The area was about fifteen meters tall and roughly one hundred meters long. As the lighting came on, there were rows and rows and stacks and stacks of some kind of rectangular end caps all lit in a soft amber glow. There appeared to be space behind the end caps.
Paul was first in, and again stated, “What is this place?”
A large display screen lit up, just to the side of the first stack of rows. Scrolling green letters appeared: “This is Suspended Animation Repository 46. Conditions are conducive for proper function; however, there was damage which resulted in termination of 462 occupants. There are now 1538 occupants now abiding in this facility.”
/> “Who are you?” Gretchen asked as she joined Paul. They both holstered their weapons.
Brinley was making sure the pressure door was locked in the open position.
The green scrolling letters continued across the large display. “I am TSI-200A. Has the Vanguard made planet fall in the Westerhuis 9 system? Upon my last briefing, there were six known planets with the second planet, named Projima as most promising. Have there been further developments?
“An artificial intelligence?” Gretchen asked.
Brinley stood with them now and stated, “Those are compartments for sleepers. Each one of those contains a person.”
“That is correct,” the green scrolling letters read. “Has planet fall happened? Please answer inquiry?”
“Did you say there were fifteen hundred people in here?” Paul asked in amazement. It reminded him of the entire population of Dome 17.
“There are 1538 occupants now abiding in this facility. Has the Vanguard made planet fall?”
“I thought that all the sleepers had died back in the Outbreak,” Brinley commented. “The CPO has always maintained that the Roe murdered the sleepers, or that they all got infected. Yet here are some….” Brinley walked up to the nearest rectangular end cap and peered inside. “The permalloy is not completely clear. There is a body inside.”
Gretchen walked to the other side of the chamber and looked into another one of the compartments. “How many sleepers were there on the Vanguard?”
“I am not sure. I have seen only one other place like this, and that entire section had been destroyed. Every compartment there was destroyed. They had been ripped apart. I assumed all the places were like that,” Brinley said. “I saw that with Tennard a long time ago.”
Paul turned to look back at the large display screen. It was flashing now.
“Upon launch, the Vanguard had a total of 100,000 people as residents of suspended animation cocoons. Those are divided into fifty subdivisions of two thousand persons each. Do I understand you to say that other subsections have failed? Answer inquiry: Has the Vanguard made planet fall? Have other subsections failed?”
“I am not sure about the other places like this,” Paul said, not really certain what to say or how to answer. “Do you have monitoring connections to those other sections?”
“Negative. Unable to connect to lattice. Tertiary system management in place. Chronological perception malfunctioning. Has the Vanguard made planet fall?”
“No. What is the last event you remember?” Paul asked. Brinley and Gretchen had turned back to watch the odd interchange between Paul’s verbal conversation and the artificial intelligence’s scrolling responses.
“Last log records show main power decoupled. Backup power restored. Unable to compute time interval due to chronological perception malfunction. Criminal acts took place. There were 462 failures of cocoons. Security summoned and criminal acts mitigated.”
“Security?” Gretchen asked in worry.
A panel opened under the large display and a red automacube rolled out. Its weapon’s muzzles were pointed directly at them. The upper arm appendage was folded flat to the top of the automacube. There were dings and dents and large scratches in the red colors and the number 990 on the side of the automacube. One drive wheel had a moderate sized chunk missing from it.
All three people drew their weapons and aimed them at the red automacube.
“Keep that thing away!” Paul yelled.
“Halt automacube activity!” Brinley commanded.
The red automacube halted.
Gretchen kept her pistol aimed at the automacube. “Will that attack us?”
The green scrolling lettering responded. “Security automacube S990 protected this facility from criminal acts. Inquiry: Are you intent on criminal activity?”
“No,” Paul replied. He was reading the display screen. Both Brinley and Gretchen had their weapons trained on the red automacube and were intent on watching its every move. “We came here searching to find out what was here. We are not familiar with the deck plans. Can you assist us?”
“Possibly. You are different from prior personnel who visited here and did criminal activity.” The green lettering scrolled the message. It was no longer flashing and seemed a bit calmer shade of green
The security machine rolled back into a storage area where it was barely visible. The panel stayed open.
“Thank you,” Gretchen said as her heart beat slowed and she lowered the pistol, but kept it ready. She knew how fast automacubes could move and the brutality of their projectile and incendiary munitions. “You said something about criminal acts and some of these sleepers dying?”
“Showing report readied for TSI-6 Suspended Animation Hibernation Oversight. This will be sent when links and couplings to the lattice are re-established. There is no time stamp due to malfunction of chronological perception.”
The green scrolling letters faded out and the display screen showed four views of the chamber they were in. Each view was from a different aperture but covered the entirely of the area. Under each individual view was a label, ‘A-1’ through A-4’.
“I do not want to watch some horrific recorded event again,” Paul said and turned away. His mind was replaying his time in Dome 3 when Jamie, Karen, and he had seen what had once happened there.
On the display a grille was seen shaking and then popping off and falling inward. A figure crawled out. It was holding a permalloy pry bar and was wearing a ripped, but not severely tattered uniform. As it lifted itself up, it turned toward A-3 and its blazing orange eyes were striking in their intensity.
“That is a Roe!” Gretchen said.
“Not just one, but many,” Brinley observed as several more crawled out of the small ventilation shaft that lay behind the broken grille. Each of the Roe was armed with some kind of pry bar or axe or sledge hammer. They began bashing the ends of the suspended animation cocoons.
Paul only briefly watched. “After what I have seen just today, this makes me sick. I can only imagine what they will do with people immobilized and unable to fight or flee. The Roe disgust me.”
“Paul, knowing what happened might help us. They do not move as shuffling or as clumsy as the Roe we have seen,” Gretchen stated. “Notice too they have proper tools, and not some makeshift club. How long ago was this?”
The displays four views faded out and the green scrolling letters came back.
“Unknown term, ‘Roe’ not identified. The criminal activity happened an unknown length of time after the chronological malfunction. Conjecture places the cause of chronological malfunction at the same incident as primary and secondary systems failures. Tertiary system in operation now. Continue report?”
“Just show us how you stopped the Roe…. I mean how you stopped the criminal activity,” Gretchen stated.
“Affirmative, report adjusted and continuing.”
The letters faded out again and the display scenes were again shown. There were numerous damaged cocoons. Some had been forced open, and the human occupants had been pulled out. Those were dismembered and large areas of bloody and mutilated remains were visible. The Roe had been feeding. Many more of the cocoons just had broken seals from the repeated pounding the Roe had done on them. Those units were dark and without illumination.
Then the displays showed the automacube S990 entering from the pressure door. The door sealed behind it “Disperse. Disperse. Return to designated areas.” The mechanical voice of S990 stated in a very loud manner.
The Roe ignored it. One Roe was ripping an arm off the torso of a sleeper. The automacube rushed into the melee and approached the first Roe and fired some kind of wired device. The Roe shook a bit, but did not fall. The other Roe then lunged at the automacube and began bashing it with their pry bars, axes, and sledge hammers.
The red automacube spun around rapidly with the wheels on one side spinning forward, while the wheels on the other side spun backward. This caused a rapid spinning which knocked all th
e Roe to the deck. “Disperse. Disperse. Return to designated areas.”
Again the Roe leaped at the machine and beat at it. It was only then that it engaged its lethal arsenal. With exact precision it shot each Roe a single time, usually striking them dead center in the forehead. They all fell to the deck.
The machine then methodically dragged each deceased body, both Roe and sleeper toward the far end of the chamber. It sprayed them with incineration gel and ignited that charnel pile. After the flames burned brilliantly for a moment, the red automacube sprayed the area with fire retardant gas. It was all over surprisingly quickly. The area had been sanitized.
The last scene on the display was the red automacube awkward attempts to replace the grille over the vent. It managed to do so with significant effort.
The Colony Ship Vanguard: The entire eight book series in one bundle Page 71
