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

by John Thornton

  She reached out and touched the nearly black colored walls, and they were slimy and damp. She could not identify what they consisted of or where she was located. She rapped on the wall, and there was no sound. The wall was not permalloy, nor was it any type of wood or polymers. It was a mystery. The ceiling was not far over her head and was constructed of the same materials as the walls and floor. Some kind of black, slimy, damp and hard substance.

  Larissa checked her pockets and pouches. The pistol was missing, and the multiceiver in her pocket was cracked. She tried to activate the multiceiver, but there was no response. She could not even initiate a self diagnosis or turn on a light from it. The display screen was just blank. She checked over the rest of her body. The small two-edged knife she carried in her boot was still there. Her uniform was ripped and torn in a few places but basically intact.

  She rubbed the bruises on her back, and right arm as she looked for a way to escape. The walls were not symmetrical. She was unable to distinguish the shape of the chamber. In the dim light, which somehow sort of glowed from the chamber itself, she followed the wall until she bumped into something on the floor. She squatted down.

  “Who is this?” Larissa said as she realized someone was lying on the floor.

  “I am Constable Herric for all the good it does me,” the man replied.

  Larissa peered at the man. She had only seen Herric on a few rare occasions and only through the display of the multiceiver. Herric always made Larissa think of an angry dog. He had a hooked nose which had been broken on more than one occasion, and apparently not set by the medical automacubes at the infirmary. His pale complexioned face was familiar.

  “Herric of A Habitat, Oasis?” Larissa asked.

  “The very same,” he replied as he looked at her with his wide green eyes. He was mostly bald, but around the rim of his head he had some silky, wavy, brown hair. “You are Governor Larissa of the Wilds, if I am not mistaken.”

  “Yes,” Larissa said. “Where are we?”

  “I wish I knew. A nightmare I hope, but I have slept and awaken and slept here too much for this to be a real nightmare,” Herric replied. He coughed a bit.

  “How did I get here?” Larissa asked.

  Herric tried to stretch out his very tall and sleek body, but was weak and unable to straighten up. His movements again reminded Larissa of a dog in his leanness. However, that leanness was now exhausted, stiff and tight when he moved. He pushed himself up so he was sitting with his back against the black wall.

  “I was in interrogation, and when I was pit back in here you were here as well. I can only relate how I was brought here. It was in a horrible sack. A sack filled with stale air and dragged down by one of the enemies,” Herric replied.

  “What are they?” Larissa asked.

  “Best if I leave that for you to discover yourself. I am not sure if I am raving mad, or already dead,” Herric answered. “They are fiendish and evil.”

  “I was knocked senseless, and then awoke here. Are there more of us prisoners?” Larissa asked.

  “I have seen a few others, at interrogations. But they may just be hallucinations. Perhaps I have gone insane and all this is in my mind? Oh, if only that were true.” Herric looked at his legs, and tried to move them. “Oh, I pray I am in the infirmary at Murom, in a psychological crisis. That would be preferable to these things being real.”

  “What was happening before you were taken prisoner?” Larissa asked.

  “We had secured Inaccessible Island. The smugglers have been…..They are coming again. If you listen you can hear them coming through the waters.”

  “Smugglers are coming?” Larissa asked.

  “No. I wish that were the case. The enemy is coming. The enemy of all of us. I will keep fighting,” Herric said with a wild look in his eyes. “When they take me, I will fight.”

  The black walls began to ungulate and push together. Herric rolled to the side, as the wall shoved him away from Larissa. She watched as the two sides of the chamber collapsed inward. She considered grabbed Herric and holding on, but her mind then saw that as the walls came together; her arm could very well be crushed. The blackness of the closing walls separated her from Herric.

  “I think light bothers them!” Herric yelled. “Use light!” His voice was muffled and then cut off.

  The side walls had come together and sealed over. Larissa was alone in the chamber. The section where Herric had been ceased to exist. She dropped down to a squat and considered what she had seen and what little was known.

  Larissa squatted there for a long while, and then she shifted and sat down. The passing of time was hard to determine, but Larissa thought it to be several hours. She unbraided her hair, and then braided it again several times. The repetition of that normal action soothed her troubled mind and emotions. She had not had to do that since she was a child.

  There was a hard bump which shook the chamber, and Larissa was knocked to the side. The whole room shook. She turned to look at the wall where the impact had taken place, and it was flattening out and thinning out as if something were pushing in from outside. The black wall oozed away in rivulets until a permalloy pressure door was revealed.

  Larissa pulled the small knife from her boot, concealed it in her palm, and stood up. The pressure door slid open sideways.

  The corridor, hall, or room beyond was made from mostly clear permalloy with an arched top. The ends of the hall each had a pressure door. Those pressure doors were opaque permalloy of a light gray color. The floor was colored a deep shade of blue. Larissa stepped inside and the pressure door shut behind her. She was pleased to have better light here than in the black prison cell. The air was also marginally better. Illumination came from a thin strip of lights running at the top of the room to the other end, about ten meters away. That was where the second pressure door was located. There was a slight reflection off the clear permalloy archway which made it possible to tell where the clear permalloy was.

  Outside of that clear permalloy there was a strange sight. On one side were dark swirling waters. On the other was some kind of purplish-blue construction roughly the same size and shape as the room Larissa was in. It reminded Larissa of the sphere she had battled. It was connected to the clear permalloy, and in a few places seemed to have melted through the permalloy and there were bluish lumps on the inside of the permalloy itself.

  The other pressure door opened, and a woman leaped out. She was wearing utility coveralls, and had numerous tools on her belt and in pockets. She had long, straight, light-brown hair and large expressive hazel eyes which were wide in fear. She looked around and then saw Larissa.

  Their eyes locked.

  “Larissa!”

  “Brinley!”

  The two women stared at each other in mutual hostility and anger.

  Brinley and Larissa both moved to draw their sidearms, but neither had those weapons.

  Larissa felt the knife in her other palm, and then said, “You are here as well.”

  “How did you bring me here? What are those things you are using?” Brinley fingered a cutting tool which was protruding from her pocket.

  The door behind Larissa slid open. She stepped sideways so as to be able to see both Brinley and the door.

  Herric flopped out and landed face down.

  The door slid shut behind him.

  “More of your work?” Brinley asked. “Another of your victims?”

  Herric rolled himself over, weakly. “I fought them again… I never tell them anything.” He coughed up some dark fluids which partially stuck to his face as they dripped away. He wiped feebly at the mess. “Are you really here?”

  Larissa looked to Brinley and then to Herric. “I have not brought either of you here. I too am a prisoner, for now.”

  “I do not believe you,” Brinley said. Her eyes did notice Larissa’s empty holster. “You have a multiceiver, so who are you in discussion with?”

  Larissa pulled out the broken multiceiver. “Here it is!
” She tossed it down on the floor. “It is kaput. What do you know of these things that have captured us?”

  Brinley considered helping the man on the floor, but by his black and red uniform, he was probably a trooper or even someone of higher rank. She was unsure which habitat, as his arms were covered. She also considered trying to contact Tiffany again through the communication link over her ear, but all she had gotten was static on her last attempts. The link had power, but she could not make contact.

  “I know we are in a section of an underwater corridor. I do not know what that is,” Brinley pointed at the purplish-blue construction outside of the room.

  “How did these pressure doors open to let us in?” Larissa asked. “It appears to me that this corridor has been modified by our captors, and they are controlling it.”

  Herric had managed to sit up against the side wall. He replied, “I have been in this place before. It is for interrogation. It was once part of the connecting corridors under the sea of my habitat. If you look through that murk, you will see the wreckage of where our enemies destroyed the rest of the corridor.”

  “This is under the sea by Inaccessible Island?” Brinley asked in surprise. Her eyes never left Larissa. “That is impossible. The sea is clear.”

  “It was, before the enemy came,” Herric stated. He tried to stand but was too weak. He reached for the multiceiver. Larissa gently kicked it so it slid over to him.

  He fumbled with it, but the display would not activate. He let his arm fall to the floor. “I am too weak.”

  “Yes, Herric, it is broken,” Larissa said in a more gentle tone than she used with Brinley.

  “Herric? Constable Herric? The one who was killing the Free Rangers?” Brinley said. She pulled the cutting tool from her pocket. “Herric of Oasis?”

  Herric nodded his head, but did not verbally respond. His breathing was staggered and gurgling.

  Through the murky waters outside of the clear permalloy, a glow approached. It came close enough to see that it was one of the purplish-blue spheres.

  “So your things come to do more mischief?” Brinley asked.

  “They are not under my control. If they were, would I be in here with you?” Larissa snapped back.

  “The enemy comes…. for interrogation,” the man Herric said and tried again to stand. He fell back to the floor when his knees gave out.

  “You could help your ally,” Brinley snarled. “You can see he is suffering.”

  Larissa watched as the sphere outside attached itself to the purple framework. Then there was a slit which spread apart in the barrier between the sphere and the room. Through that round orifice swam a thing.

  “That room is water filled,” Brinley said in shock. “Clear water.”

  “Yes,” Herric mumbled. “Then enemy lives in the waters. We did not…. Until too late…”

  Inside the fluid filled room, with only the clear permalloy separating them, was a creature. It glowed an odd bluish-purple color. The top was a dome shape with segmented sides, perhaps more bell shaped with a thick and heavy stem came down from the middle of the dome and ended in a strange coil. At the pinnacle of the dome was a ball about the size of a human head, but it was no head, as it had no surfaces features at all. Underneath the dome were trailing tentacles wiggling around the central stem. From top to bottom the creature was a bit taller than Larissa. It floated effortlessly before them.

  “What is that?” Brinley said in shock and revulsion.

  “The enemy…. Must fight it,” Herric said and pounded a fist weakly against the wall. “Do not say anything.”

  One of the creature’s tentacles moved up and wrapped around a part of the frame of the chamber it was in.

  “Do you receive this?” An eerie voice came from one of the purple lumps on the clear permalloy. “Answer now.”

  Herric thumped his fist and gritted his teeth, but said nothing.

  Larissa and Brinley did not answer.

  “The weak one again does not cooperate. It is not needed,” the eerie voice said. A small burst came from a different lump of purple on the wall. A globe of white hurled out and smashed into Herric’s face. It expanded as it struck him. Both his eyes were covered over with the white filmy stuff. He rolled away in agony. “So cold!” he screamed. He ripped at his eyes with his hands, but could not remove what had attached to him. His legs kicked vigorously.

  “Leave him alone!” Brinley cried out and rushed forward toward where the thing was floating.

  “Do you receive this?” An eerie voice asked again. “Answer now.”

  “Yes! I hear you! Stop hurting him,” Brinley yelled.

  “No. It is unneeded.”

  The white stuff on Herric’s eyes expanded down and covered over his nose and mouth. His screams were cut short.

  Brinley rushed to him and pulled out the cutting tool and tried to remove the white stuff.

  “Youch!” Brinley cried out as her hand briefly touched the white stuff. “It is colder than ice.” The white material filled his mouth and nose as well as covering over his eyes and ears.

  Herric’s body gave a shudder and he stopped breathing. His arms and legs flopped a bit, but then he lay still.

  “You killed him!” Brinley yelled at the thing floating in the other chamber. She then turned to Larissa, “And you just stand by and watch?”

  “Were you effective in removing that substance?” Larissa asked.

  “What?” Brinley snapped back.

  “Explain this machine,” the thing in the tank asked. A different tentacle held up the pistol Larissa had used. Brinley recognized it as a twin to the one Gretchen had carried. “Answer now, or you will not be needed.”

  Brinley snapped her mouth shut, but Larissa answered. “It is but a minor weapon which some low level officials carry. There are many of those all across the ship.”

  Brinley looked at her and was about to give a retort, but Larissa blinked quickly. Brinley restrained her comment.

  “Explain this machine.” A different tentacle held up the organic disruptor.

  “That is a tool used for trimming unwanted foliage. There are many of those around as well,” Larissa said. Her voice was calm and collected. “If you give me either of those tools, I will show you how they work.”

  “No.”

  “What are you?” Brinley asked.

  There came a series of tones and sounds which did make sense.

  “I did not understand,” Larissa answered. “Explain more?”

  “Where is your making place for these machines?” the thing asked.

  “I will tell you, but I need to know what to call you,” Larissa answered.

  “Jellies is the word that other gas-breathers like you have called us. Where is your making place?” the Jellie asked again. “It will be eliminated.”

  “There are many of those places, many making places. They are made in every habitat and in every sector of the ship. I can take you to one of those places,” Larissa stated. “There are many of them on the land and in the hallways, and in many other places. The making places are numerous.”

  There was a long and very disturbing pause. The Jellie’s many tentacles flipped through the water more rapidly. Then the Jellie unwrapped its tentacle from what it was holding onto and swam back out of the clear water and through the slit shaped orifice and into the bluish-purple sphere. It moved extremely quickly. The orifice slit constricted and the sphere floated away into the murky waters.

  Larissa turned and searched through Herric’s pockets and boots. There was nothing of value.

  “Robbing the dead?” Brinley asked.

  “Yes. He will not need anything now. We must escape,” Larissa said.

  “We? How do you get ‘we’ here? What is to stop me from killing you right now? After that I will leave alone,” Brinley said as she held the cutting tool.

  Larissa turned her cold, blue eyes upon Brinley. “I would stop you. Besides, the two of us working together have a better chance o
f escape. That is why I have not killed you right now.”

  “You have not tried right now. You have not tried,” Brinley said not backing down even a centimeter.

  “So we can stand here like rutting animals, or we can escape. I chose to escape,” Larissa stated, and broke eye contact.

  “We do need to escape.” Having watched the murder of Herric, and seeing the thing called a Jellie, had convinced Brinley that Larissa was a captive as well.