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

by John Thornton

  Lyudmila led them into the place she had selected. It was a two story building which was about half intact. It had onion-shaped domes on the two corners which were still intact. The rest was a shambles with great arched sections of permalloy lying on the ground among other chunks of the hard metal which had been melted or shattered apart. The front side had been melted away and the rubble had fallen into the street to re-harden into a rough short wall.

  Lyudmila said to them, “I will climb up and get a view on the enemy. You two stay down here. There is only room for one person up there.” She climbed the remains of the stairs that were at the center of one of the upright walls. She then scampered up to the roofline and climbed out on the remaining slanted roof. She could just fit in under the onion-shaped dome on one side where there were slots of about a half meter high and not quite that wide. It was just enough space for Lyudmila to take a position.

  Gretchen and Paul crawled forward, keeping the short wall between them and the direction where the Jellies were thought to be by the river.

  “This is not a good idea,” Paul said. “I cannot see anything but shadows in this dim light, with all these broken building around us. How will we know where the Jellies are?”

  “Lyudmila is just going to see where they are and tell us,” Gretchen said in assumption. “She will then come down and we will make plans.”

  Lying in a prone position, most of her body covered over by the religiously decorative dome above her, Lyudmila looked through the optics of the L-ROD. With the light enhancement and the magnification, she could just see the purplish glow of the Jellies in their armored suit-spheres as they were in the mud of the riverbank. The bag was fuller with even more bodies now than when she had seen it before. It still glowed from the inner light and in the optics; Lyudmila could see the fuzzy shapes of the murdered humans inside that purple shroud of death.

  Shifting her focus just a bit, she looked at the nearest Jellie. Its four legs were in the mud, but it had appendages jutting out from the center of the sphere. The purplish-blue glow was stronger with the individual Jellies than from inside the lumpy mound of victims.

  “Father, I wish you were here,” Lyudmila said. She checked over the L-ROD as Brinley had instructed her. It was much more sophisticated than the rifles her father had taught her to use. She checked the ammunition counter and it read ‘32’ for the organic disruptor capsules. The pellet supply was just a bar indicator which was at full.

  “Now the eggs break.” Lyudmila gently squeezed the trigger.

  Wump. Wump. Wump.

  The first capsule smashed into the middle of the sphere. The sphere itself quivered a bit from the hit. Then a dull glow of yellow radiated out a bit from the initial point of impact as the organic disruptor detonated.

  Even before the organic disruption from the first shot was completed, the second capsule slammed into that glowing yellow circle and pulverized the shell of the Jellie’s suit. That second organic disruptor discharged inside of the Jellie suit right next to the Jellie itself. The Jellie itself was seized by the disruption of organic materials and it splattered all over the side of its own suit. The third shot struck the opposite side of the Jellie suit and discharged as well. By that time the Jellie was dead, the fluids which had surround it were a boiling broth of goo, and the third organic disruption detonation only ripped the suit apart further.

  “Now the rotten eggs are broken!” Lyudmila cried in triumph.

  She shifted her optics to the next target, when all of the remaining five Jellies launched a myriad of white balls directly toward her location. In the optics she saw those white balls emerge and fling themselves toward her. They traveled far slower than the projectiles from the L-ROD but still at a rapid pace.

  “Run!” Lyudmila yelled as she rolled herself off the roof of the ruined church. She dropped a meter or so off the edge of the roof and onto an outer wall which was now sloped. She slid rapidly down.

  Paul and Gretchen heard her cry and stood and wondered which direction to go.

  Just as Lyudmila hit the ground, the onion-shaped dome was consumed by white balls exploding with tremendous force. Molten permalloy flew in all directions, a chunk of which struck Paul in the forearm. It froze a path through his RAM clothing, but did not directly touch his skin. The extreme cold did cause blistering and pain. “Youch!” he cried out as he dropped and rolled away from the other falling globs of ultra-cold liquefied permalloy.

  Lyudmila crouched and then sprinted across the road and disappeared into cover in a different destroyed building.

  “Come on Paul,” Gretchen yelled and pulled him along. As they reached the ruined building, they saw Lyudmila vaulting over a fallen doorframe and away toward the river.

  “I know how to break them!” Lyudmila cried. “I will avenge my family.”

  Gretchen pushed Paul down and looked at his injured arm. “Those Jellie weapons, I am not sure how that happens, but the Jellies use some kind of process in those bombs to break the bonds in the permalloy.”

  “It is very cold,” Paul said through gritted teeth. “Do we follow Lyudmila?”

  “I wish we could, but I do not think we can follow her. She is moving way too fast,” Gretchen said. “It is not at all safe to stay here. The Jellies knew where she was, and nearly killed her with their counter-attack. We need to move away from here, and find a secure vantage point.”

  “I knew this was a bad idea,” Paul said. “The horses are gone, Lyudmila is gone, and here we are in the dark with angry Jellie aliens coming.”

  “Paul, I was wrong. I thought Lyudmila would talk to us before just attacking them. Come with me as we find a place to hunker down,” Gretchen said.

  They carefully moved from one place in the rubble to another. The gray shadows and black patches in the broken buildings were eerie. Their progress was slow, but they kept moving. “We will travel in a straight line, and hopefully get space between us and the Jellies,” Gretchen said as she led Paul.

  “Can you tell which direction we are moving?” Paul asked. “I do not want to turn on a fusion pack light.”

  “We are moving parallel to the road there. If that road was straight, we should be moving straight as well,” Gretchen replied as she gestured past the rubble to where the road had been.

  They came to an intersection where two roads crossed. They both looked carefully along each way. There were broken buildings in all direction, and a smashed yellow automacube was upside down in the middle of the intersection. Just as Gretchen was starting to move and lead Paul across the road, he hesitated.

  “Look back there!” Paul point along the road they had been near.

  A purple glow was coming down the way. It was reflecting off the broken buildings and casting even more shadows than did the limited night time light from the sky tube.

  “Jellies are heading this way,” Paul said. “We need to hide. If we cross that open space, they will see us.”

  Gretchen squatted down next to where Paul was couching.

  The glow became more bluish-purple as the Jellies drew closer to where they were hiding. It was a weird and frightening version of light. It sort of stung their eyes as they watched. The lead Jellie was moving on four stumpy legs, with long tentacle-like appendages reaching out to the sides. The tips of those appendages glowed a brighter color and it stuck the ends into the ruined buildings as it marched along.

  Paul looked around for where he could escape, but then saw more purplish glows coming down the other roads as well. He grasped Gretchen’s arm and nodded toward the other purplish lights.

  Gretchen pulled out her pistol and made ready to defend them. She could not see any direction to try to flee. Paul used his uninjured arm and he too drew his pistol.

  The Jellie drew closer, and closer, and closer. Its long whip-like appendages glowing as it stuck them into the wreckage of the buildings.

  Something struck the backside of the Jellie. It rocked a bit with the force of the impact.

&nbs
p; There was a faint, wump sound which came from a distance.

  The backside of the Jellie began to quiver and a yellow radiance came on as a high pitched screech was let out. Everywhere where the yellow had been suddenly collapsed away. Smelly fluids gushed out of the open hole in the side of the Jellie. It flailed its tentacles bringing them back and trying to quench the flow of the fluids which flowed from the Jellie suit. It could not do that. The Jellie sphere did pucker itself up and try to seal the leaking and gaping hole, but was unable to do that either. It launched a single white ball which whizzed away. Its appendages jerked around it as it rocked back and forth trying to prevent more of the inner fluids from leaking out, but it was unable to do much.

  A huge and bright purple glow appeared from around the corner as another Jellie sphere rolled quickly over to its crippled companion. This sphere spun in place and launched a barrage of white balls away. It then sprouted a couple of the long tentacle-like appendages which worked to seal the hole on its wounded companion. The hole just remained where it was, and nothing the second Jellie sphere did stopped the fluids from leaking out, or stopped cracks from appearing and snaking out and away as the Jellie sphere split and broke apart.

  Paul and Gretchen watched with their eyes wide as the injured sphere cracked even more, and a wave of fluids were splashed out of the cracks. A living tentacle, then another slid out along with the fluids, but they moved in a panicked and uncoordinated manner. The intact sphere spun a bit more and then rolled rapidly away back the way the dying one had come.

  The glow of the ruptured and ruined sphere was fading as the Jellie itself finally completely slid out of its protective suit. The tentacles came first, and several of those had visible damage on them. They were leaking a different color of fluid, and the flesh was dangling from their ends. Then came a long stem with a barbed point on one end. The stem, to which the tentacles were attached, was connected into the underside of a segmented cap. At the pinnacle of that cap was a ball about the size of a human fist. As the Jellie suit crumbled around it, the being inside lost its watery environment and was floundering on the ground. From end to end the creature was a bit longer than Gretchen was tall. A foul odor reached Paul and Gretchen and they had trouble not vomiting, so disgusting was the smell. The last of the fluids were draining down into the sewers which lined the road, and the Jellie itself was unable to move more than just a flip of the end of a tentacle. The purple glow faded out, and then was gone.

  The multiceiver on Paul’s belt surprisingly blinked twice and then Lyudmila’s voice came on very quietly. There was no image on the display. “I am still cracking these rotten eggs. Thank you for your help. Twenty six more shots to go. There are no monsters near you now. I will continue to….”

  Lyudmila’s voice was cut off in mid sentence. Then the display lit up brightly. Paul blinked his eyes against the glare as his position was now illuminated. “Unauthorized user on system,” said the midshipman as his face appeared on the display. “You are in violation of…”

  Paul shut down the multiceiver.

  Gretchen looked around. “Paul, she saved our lives, and killed that Jellie. The L-ROD Brinley made works!”

  “But the CPO cut her off. So what do we do now?” Paul asked.

  His medallion under his shirt got warm, and a different voice came from it.

  “I believe I can help you with that. I have been monitoring your engagement with these enemies, and while you are using dishonorable weapons, I am glad you have had success. I have an even more effective way, but I need you to retrieve something I am sending from Safari.”

  “The Artemis?” Gretchen said in surprise.

  “You heard that? You really heard that too?” Paul asked.

  “Yes, I allowed Gretchen to hear as well,” The Artemis stated. “Now if you will need to find a way to escape from that town. I will instruct you further as needed. I suggest you move quickly.”

  “Great, just great. How do we get away from here? Where do we go? That midshipman lit up our hiding place like a supernova in space. How are we expected to flee?” Paul whined. “Do we just stumble through the rubble until it is day?”

  “Meeooh?” came an animal’s cry from the shadows.

  Paul, startled, looked around. “A cat? Here?” He then felt something rubbing up against his knee where he was squatting. It was gray and black striped. “Mawooh?”

  “It is Bernie the patrol cat,” Gretchen said. “He must have followed us all the way here.”

  The cat moved quickly over to a darker shadow. “Meeeaai”

  Gretchen crawled after the cat. “Paul, there is a space here that heads downward at an angle. It is some kind of pipe, smells like a drainage sewer or plumbing system. We can get away.”

  “Follow some animal down a dark pipe?” Paul asked.

  “Meaaaoow.”

  “Do you have a better idea?” Gretchen asked. “Bernie just walked down into that pipe.”

  “Oh all right, but I hate my life,” Paul said as he slipped in front of Gretchen and crawled after the patrol cat.

  8 on the road to miass

  “The wagon is packed up,” Larissa said to Brinley. They were standing in front of what Brinley remembered as the Constable’s office in Orsk. The sign over the door had been changed several times since Brinley had skied in over the snows on a rescue mission. She still had some bitter feelings about that event from the previous winter.

  “I do not feel right about just leaving that young girl to fend for herself. I know Paul and Gretchen are there with her, but, honestly, she will probably be nurturing and protecting them more than the other way around,” Brinley said.

  “Undoubtedly. Paul needs much nurturing. Without being able to connect with any of them through the multiceivers, do you have another suggestion?” Larissa asked bluntly. “I too want to help them, but aside from getting the CPO shut down and the lattice diverted over to my control, I am not sure what we can do.”

  “I was just considering. The gravity conduits are separate from the transport system, or from the multiceivers. I think we should send some supplies through via the gravity conduits so that should Paul, Gretchen, or Lyudmila get near one, they will be alerted to a delivery. It worked before.”

  “A good option,” Larissa announced. “What do we send them?”

  “We should send Lyudmila another package of 40 organic disruptor capsules. If they have engaged the Jellies, she will need more ammunition. The L-RODs and the Dome 17 pistols make their own nuggets for ballistic use, but the organic disruptor capsules are different. If we set a security access identifier then it will not deliver to anyone except those three.”

  “Yes. That is a good plan,” Larissa said. “I would consider sending them addition L-RODs, but since we are assembling those rifles by hand from component parts, I do not want the CPO or the Jellies to intercept the weapons themselves. The capsules alone will not reveal much about the L-RODs. The longer we can keep our weapons a secret the more effective they will be when we need them.”

  Larissa walked away, heading for the headquarters. “I will arrange for those shipments to be made.”

  Brinley looked at the two wheeled wagon, and the four poitevin donkeys which were harnessed to it. ‘I wish this was a shuttle instead’ she thought to herself. She was familiar with these pack animals used in the habitat, but she mentally compared them to the horse she saw with Lyudmila. Each of these poitevin donkeys was much more hairy. They were equally or perhaps a bit more muscular than the haflinger horse, although it was hard to tell on the donkeys with their long hair. Both horse and donkey had upright rectangular heads, but the poitevin had much longer pointed ears. The horse had been sleek and buckskin colored while the poitevin were dark brown or black in color. The nearly white blonde mane of the horse was also strikingly different from the poitevin’s dark mane, forelock, and tail. The harness was nearly invisible under the thick hair on the donkeys. One donkey lifted his tail and expelled a large and pungent pile
of fecal material.

  Brinley wrinkled her nose. “None of my shuttles ever did that.” She waved her hand to try to get rid of the smell.

  Larissa walked briskly back. “Those deliveries have been ordered. The gravity conduit will key off the multiceiver signals Lyudmila, Paul, and Gretchen carry, then confirm with a voice recognition key. Hopefully, the interference in the multiceivers will not block those identification signals.”

  “I thought me were going to ride to Miass and then down into the Canyon and out through the exit to reach our launch site.” Brinley rubbed the side of the wagon.

  “Slight change of plans.” Larissa reached over and pulled back the tarpaulin in the rear of the wagon. Under it was a crate with twelve L-ROD weapons as well as six cases of additional organic disruptor capsules and fusion packs.