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

by John Thornton

  Three troopers rushed forward, and one man jumped onto the back of the right poitevin and pulled it to a halt.

  “Emergency Medical Evacuation Protocols needed!” Another trooper yelled, her voice carrying over the gathering crowds.

  “Find that shooter!” the third trooper yelled out. “Civilians to their homes immediately. Militia status at all homes, await instructions.”

  The people scattered to obey.

  Three automacubes rolled rapidly out of the front doors of the palace. Two were white medical automacubes and one was a red security automacube. They rushed up to the wagon as the troopers were laying Larissa’s gravely injured body onto the street. There was blood pooled over her right chest where the entry wound had happened, and blood was rapidly flowing out the much greater exit wound in her back.

  The red automacube scanned the palace building and then placed a tight beam of light onto a small balcony and the window. Even in the daylight the beam of light illuminated that place. There were popping sounds as several canisters were launched from the automacube and passed through the open window. Some troopers rushed back into the building.

  One trooper dropped to his knees and pulled out a quick injection syringe from his pouch on his belt. He popped it open and slammed it down into Larissa’s thigh where the needle penetrated clothing and went into muscle.

  The white automacube’s appendages speedily cut through Larissa’s clothing and then were used to insert several large infusions lines into Larissa’s chest, and one ventilation tube down her throat. As the tube was sliding into her mouth, Larissa whispered, “I am sorry, Brinley.”

  Brinley hovered over her and watched the automacubes do their work.

  The endotracheal tube was inserted and a face mask sealed over it.

  “Emergency Medical Treatments begun,” said one of the white automacubes. “Suspended animation for transport initiated.”

  Massive amounts of medicated fluids were flowing into Larissa from the automacube. Medicated air was forced down the breathing tube. Both machines were pumping fluids and other substances into her body. The bloody spot on her right breast hardened and sealed over. Only slightly slower was the coagulation of the exit wound. Larissa’s cold blue eyes looked upward toward the sky tube far overhead. They did not blink. They did not move. They did dilate as the treatments shut down her neurological system.

  “What has happened?” A commanding voice called out as a man stormed forward.

  “Larissa has been shot, S320 identified the location of the shooter,” one of the troopers reported. “Constable Brock, I sent a team searching for the shooter.” The trooper pointed toward the palace where the red automacube had fired the canisters.

  Constable Brock’s deep-set brown eyes were the color of tree bark. They glared at the trooper and then at Brinley. His thick, jet-black hair was shaved almost to the point of baldness. His nearly black skin covered a slender, but muscular physique which he held in tension.

  “Get her to the infirmary immediately. Highest priority!” His commands were like an unstoppable machine and the people and machines all around him jumped to obey.

  “Yes, Constable,” the closest white automacube answered. The medical automacubes surrounded Larissa, who was now in full suspended animation. They placed her body on a stretcher. It inflated and secured Larissa, the treatment ports which had been inserted, as well as elevating her up on gravity manipulation so the stretcher and Larissa were hovering over the street. Attaching their manipulation arms to the stretcher, the two medical automacubes rushed Larissa away and into the palace.

  “Tell me what you saw,” Constable Brock commanded as he pushed his face up to Brinley’s.

  Brinley calmly reported the facts as if she were reading a list of broken shuttle parts to Tennard. She did not even notice the streak of blood which covered her cheek, or the small fragments which had embedded in her left arm.

  Governor Konstantin, a husky man with large hands, and heavy brown hair, came marching out of the palace. His hair, which never seemed to be orderly, was more disheveled than ever. His arms were wrapped around about a smaller man, who was not wearing the uniform of a trooper. The smaller man struggled a bit, but Governor Konstantin restrained him with brutal force and the prisoner yelped in pain. Handcuff were roughly applied which held his wrists behind his back. Following the Governor and the prisoner came other troopers, one holding an old-style hunting rifle.

  Brinley watched as Konstantin brought the prisoner over to the Constable.

  “This man was caught by the paralysis gas the security automacube deployed. As you can tell, it is wearing off now. He was in possession of that weapon which has recently been fired. I find him guilty of attempted murder, what do you say?” Governor Konstantin stated, not as a question, but rather a formality. From the tone of his voice he expected only agreement.

  “Governor, I respect your decision. His sentence is summary execution.” Constable Brock drew out his sidearm.

  “Sigmond?” Brinley said as she got a look at the prisoner.

  Sigmond was no longer the mere youth, with brown hair, eyes, and skin that Brinley remembered from her past. Nor was he just the man who had escaped and worked with Tennard. He had a stern and hardened look in his face, and a bitterness in his eyes. He looked ten or fifteen years older than he was.

  Sigmond snarled at Brinley. “Brinley, you have betrayed us all. You were working with that butcher! You are a disgrace to all Free Rangers.” He spit at her.

  Brock slapped Sigmond with his hand that was not holding the sidearm. The smack resounded loudly, and one of Sigmond’s teeth went flying out.

  Governor Konstantin pushed Sigmond down into a kneeling position, and at the same time, placed the sidearm’s muzzle against the back of his head.

  “Wait!” Brinley yelled. “Larissa will want to question him!” She had no idea where that idea had originated, but it blurted out. “He may have confederates.”

  “She has a point,” Constable Brock agreed. “He is in custody, and Larissa may wish to do the execution herself, after complete interrogation.”

  “If she lives,” Governor Konstantin said in a low growling voice. He lifted his weapon away from Sigmond. He then looked to Brinley. “You are one of his victims as well, but also were one of the smugglers.” His face creased for a moment in thought. “Constable Brock, arrest every smuggler which has been relocated into this habitat. Gather them all together for questioning. If there are confederates in this assassination attempt, we will find out.”

  9 off to safari?

  “But what about Lyudmila?” Gretchen asked as she crawled along through the pipe which continued to slant downward.

  Paul could not turn around very well in the tight confines. He had turned on the fusion pack light after the first bend in the pipe. He hoped the Jellies would not see the light. Gretchen had tried moving debris over the opening after she had crawled in, but that too was of dubious effectiveness.

  “She killed that Jellie pretty well,” Paul said as he pressed forward. “And our guide, the patrol cat is still leading us down this hole. What was that story we read with our age-mates? Something about some girl named Alice following some animal going down a hole into some other world?”

  “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland? Or Through a Looking Glass and What Alice Found there?” Gretchen answered with some humor in her voice. “Just do not eat any mushrooms. There is not room to grow in here.”

  “I am not even sure what a mushroom would look like,” Paul answered.

  “I think it would look like the top part of a Jellie, but not so big” Gretchen said. “But I expect there were lots of different kinds, if they were a real biological plant. We will need to ask Brinley or Larissa about those.”

  Paul pulled himself around a corner in the sewer pipe, which was dry and had now leveled off. He then said, “Did I ever tell you that the Jabberwock monster in that book really frightened me when we were little?”

&nbs
p; “It think it frightened us all,” Gretchen confessed. “At least on the Vanguard we have not encountered one of those, right?”

  “Maybe that will be next. The Roe, the Jellies, and the predators have been more than enough. I wonder which real beast that Jabberwock was based upon? Or do you think there really were Jabberwocks, and they might be living somewhere on the Vanguard? Or the beasts that inspired them?”

  “Paul, before we came to the Vanguard I would have said no there was no such beast. You know how much of history was lost in the Great Event. Now I am not so sure what to think. Those books had lots of poetry, so I thought they were all fiction, but after seeing the habitats on the Vanguard, I am coming to believe that poetry like that might have taught a real truth about real things.”

  “Well, we know real monsters exist, and here in this pipe we are being led by a small predator. It all seems ridiculous when I think about it. I wish it were all in some ancient fairy tale book, but no, this is all too real,” Paul stated.

  “Meooow. Maaaoh.”

  Paul crawled ahead, and saw that there was light coming from a round opening, and that the patrol cat Bernie was missing from his view.

  “I think this tube or tunnel opens into something larger up ahead. I am shutting off the light for a moment,” Paul said as he flicked off the fusion light.

  He rubbed his eyes and let them adjust to the dimness of the sewer tube. “Yes, there is something ahead, the cat Bernie is missing, but I can see outside, or what looks like outside, and I can smell water or a lake or something. It sort of reminds me of Inaccessible Island.”

  Paul pulled himself up to the lip of where the pipe ended. He looked out and could see a sloping field which led down and out of sight. Paul did not see anything else directly ahead, so he pulled himself out of the pipe a bit. That allowed him to see that the pipe stuck out of an embankment. To either side the embankment stretched off as far as he could see. Looking up he saw that the sky tube remained only dimly lit.

  “It opens up to outside, well in the habitat, not outside in space. It seems all right, and not in a town, at least not right close in a town. I can hear some rumbles of water like a smaller version of the waterfalls on Inaccessible Island. Water is running somewhere.”

  “Well that is a sound we did not hear as age-mates as we were maturing. Paul, the amounts of water on the Vanguard still amaze me.”

  Paul pulled himself all the way out of the tube and set his feet down on the embankment.

  “Yuck. This is all covered in mud. My feet have sunk down as deep as my shoes,” Paul said. He pulled his feet out and doing that took a mighty effort. Each foot coming up made a sucking sound as he lifted it from the mud. He could now see that the river was flowing a distance away and that the sound he had heard was the flow of that water. Paul climbed the embankment to get away from the mud and the river. He vividly recalled the fact Jellies often were in and around water.

  Gretchen tried to follow Paul’s steps, but her feet also were coated with mud by the time she joined him at the edge of the embankment.

  “Paul, I think that tube we were in used to be underwater here. It looks to me like it was a way for water to run down and out of the city and into the river. But the river is way over there. Remember Lyudmila said the water level in the stream was low, and that no rain had come on rain day? So where is the water going?”

  Paul looked over the edge of the embankment and did not see anything, so he pulled himself up onto the grass which was there. The cat Bernie was nowhere in sight.

  “Those buildings over there must be Tula, and there is nothing in that other direction,” Paul said and pointed. “Nothing I can see anyway. I do not see any signs of the Jellies, do you?”

  Gretchen looked around. “No blue or purple glows anywhere. So where do we head now? Walk away from the town?”

  “I need you to both find a secure place where I can send you some items,” the voice said from the medallion around Paul’s neck. Again the medallion grew warm as it was in use.

  “The Artemis?” Paul asked.

  “Yes, I am here. I can tell you have left that town. I need you to locate a gravity conduit. That system may be one of the only ship-wide systems that is still functional.”

  “Gretchen? Are you hearing this?” Paul asked.

  “Yes, The Artemis from Safari is speaking through that medallion. It must be some kind of communication system, maybe like the com links we used with Tiffany? Or the multiceivers?”

  “The medallion system is used only in extreme emergencies. It is a gift from Diana. It allows connection between those on missions and me,” The Artemis stated. “Now I can tell you that there is a functional gravity conduit roughly eight kilometers from your current position. You will need to follow the river upstream for now. I will inform you upon the next action when you will need to head away from the river.”

  “I am not going anywhere until I know what is happening,” Paul said. “I also do not want to just abandon Lyudmila, but I think that is a lost cause. She is probably already dead like so many other people I tried to help.”

  “The woman you call Lyudmila has been helped by you, and is not dead. She is a mighty hunter, even though she is using a dishonorable weapon. Her path and yours were together for just a short while, so far,” The Artemis stated. “She is on her own journey.”

  “It feels wrong to just abandon her in a ruined town with the Jellies. She is trapped in there with them,” Gretchen said. “That is wrong.”

  “Gretchen, your heart is noble, but your perspective is skewed. She is not trapped with the Jellies in that town. The Jellies are trapped with her. Already she has dispatched seven more Jellies, and she is tracking the remaining few which are trying to find refuge from her. The Jellies are not used to being the prey. There are still Jellies in the river systems of the Woods, but Lyudmila has nearly annihilated the pod of Jellies in that town.”

  “So we just wait until she kills them all, and then we join her and find a safe place. Finally a plan we can count on,” Paul muttered. His voice then fell. “But I doubt that is your idea, right?”

  “Paul and Gretchen, there are too few hunters, and too many enemies. The Jellies have been driven out of Safari, at a tremendously horrible cost to my people. It took us too long to understand how to land the spear in the heart of our enemies. They are gone from here now, but the ecology of Safari may never be the same. Air, water, and land are spoiled,” The Artemis stated. Her words were filled with emotion. “I do not want that for other habitats. I tried conveying the information we discovered to the Central Planning Office, but they refuse to listen. Now I cannot contact anyone outside of Safari, expect for you two, and that is only because of the medallion. Only you are outside of Safari, and only you can help me. Your mission is essential.”

  “This sounds bad,” Paul muttered. “This sounds very very bad.”

  “What can we do?” Gretchen asked. “Is Safari viable as a habitat?”

  “We believe it is, but I have directed all the remaining hunters to keep Safari secure and rebuild what has been so deeply wounded. As for you, please proceed to the gravity conduit. There you will receive some items from me. Those items will be used when you capture a Jellie,” The Artemis stated.

  “Capture a Jellie?” Paul cried. “Are you insane? I have seen those things tear huge animals apart, and beat automacubes into worthless junk.” Paul blew out his air in a huff. “Capture a Jellie? Impossible, and besides why? Why? Why are you asking us to die?”

  The Artemis’ voice was controlled, with only a tinge of sadness now. “You are responding as expected. As I said, the cost in lives here was immense in driving off the Jellies. We were only able to do that when we discovered a natural way to penetrate their armored suits, the spheres. By that time, we were so desperate we killed the last remaining Jellie in this habitat.”

  “You killed them all in that habitat. Good. What is the problem? Just go take some hunters out of your habitat and go get
a Jellie if you want one,” Paul said. “This is insanity. You are only asking us to do this because you are too cowardly to do it yourself.”

  This time The Artemis’ voice was edgy and angry, but controlled. “Indeed, I would much prefer to use honorable people I know and trust, but that is not to be. I am calling on you. Let me make this personal to you, Paul. I could leave you alone, but if I do that then you will die there in the Woods. Is that motivation enough for you?”

  “So you say,” Paul replied, a bit more subdued. “You did not answer why you do not just exit the habitat and capture one yourself?”

  “You and Gretchen are immune to the Outbreak, and our numbers are very limited right now. So you can help me, and I will help you. If the Jellies are to be defeated, one of them must be captured for study. We have done all we could with the dead bodies of the Jellies. Upon death their bodies rot and decompose at an exceptional rate which greatly limits what we can learn. Your mission is to capture a Jellie alive for study. That is the only way to successfully defend the Vanguard. We won the battle for Safari, but the war for the Vanguard goes badly. If we lose that, everyone will die. So will you now proceed to the gravity conduit? When you receive the items, they will also have a detailed plan which shows how the two of you can capture a Jellie alive. Most important of all, Paul, you are the Longinus that Diana has appointed to this task. You have been chosen.”