“Ouch!” Paul let out a wail as his hand was scorched a bit by the energy. He had still been trying to punch in a code to the color pad, but now the energy wall was in his way.
Gretchen fired the molecular torch up to its harshest cutting blade and applied that to the energy curtain. With a sizzle and a fizz the molecular torch cut out. The handle on it got very warm and Gretchen dropped it before she was burned.
“This unit is optimistic that the teleportation system will be functional. The two humans and the captive alien will now be taken to the desired location. Energy, frequency, and vibration all optimum.”
The orifice at the front began to move toward them rapidly. The center of it was still forming shapes, and growing in clarity. Looking into it, it had more of a sense of depth and tunnel-likeness.
Paul stepped in front of Gretchen and over the top of the containment canister. He put up both his hands toward the orifice. “When it kills me, maybe that crazed Phoenix thing will stop this insanity and spare you!”
The brightness of the edges of the orifice intensified. The orifice drew closer quickly. The edge of it touched Paul’s outstretched fingers.
Paul screamed.
14 Recovery and continuation
Larissa and Brinley both pulled off their bubble helmets at nearly the same instant. Disgust was etched into each of their faces.
Brinley slipped off the spacesuit faster than Larissa could and had her pistol out and in hand. “I believe we have a situation.”
“Yes, Brinley, I agree.” Larissa kicked her own spacesuit off and pulled out her own weapon. “But what do we do about it? If the CPO is truly coming here, we need to flee. However we need to ask, is this a trap or an opportunity?”
“If that AI was speaking the truth, Larissa. Then we do need to flee. It could have killed us in flight or in the hanger bay. It might be assisting us, but I am not sure. I want another opinion on all this.” She pulled out the multiceiver and flicked it on.
There was no response from the levers marked, ‘Paul’ or ‘Gretchen’ and just as she was putting it away her eye caught the control marked, ‘Doctor Chambers’ and she thumbed that on. She recalled she had not contacted Doctor Chambers as she had scheduled.
“There is little time for discussion,” Larissa reminded her. “However, if Paul or Gretchen has any information that could be helpful.”
Doctor Chambers face appeared on the display. “Brinley. That was quick. I am glad you came here after you sent that message to Gretchen. How are you doing?” His face had a huge smile on it.
“You spoke to Gretchen?”
“Yes, at the same time as you got that message to her a few moments ago. Paul and she were pleased to know what to do with that captive Jellie,” Doctor Chambers replied. “How long will it take them to reach you?”
“Wait. I did not send a message,” Brinley said a bit startled. “Captive Jellie? What do you mean?”
“Oh no,” Doctor Chamber said, his face looked stricken. “I am certain some message reached Gretchen which she thought was from you. You sent a vehicle to pick them up. I could tell….”
“It must have been a fake,” Larissa said and looked at the display Brinley held. “There is no time for this. I am not comfortable just waiting here.”
“Right,” Brinley answered. “Tell Gretchen and Paul I have not contacted them. No message sent by me. None!”
Brinley shut off the multiceiver. Leaving the spacesuits behind, but taking their gear, tools, and weapons, Larissa and Brinley cautiously, but hurriedly assessed and walked through the observation deck for the hanger bay. The bank of monitors was still and quiet. The chairs neatly arranged in front of those monitors. The work stations scattered about were also tidy and in order. On the far wall, there was a security door. The color pad control mechanism began to flash. Its nine different colors were vibrant and intense.
“I think our… what would you call Phoenix Dominie, guide, benefactor, or stalker?” Brinley asked.
“Call it Phoenix for now,” Larissa answered. “Our only exit is out that door, so we do need to move.” She walked briskly over to the security door, her pistol at the ready, the L-ROD and backpack slung on her back. As she reached for the control pad, it stopped flashing and glowed a solid single green.
The security door slid open to reveal a hallway stretching to the right and the left. About twenty meters away, in both directions was another security door. The one to the right had a color pad next to it which was not illuminated, the one to the left was flashing its nine colors.
Brinley joined Larissa and said, “Here we do have a choice. We can follow the lead Phoenix is giving us, or I can get us through that other door.”
As Brinley and Larissa checked both directions, the flashing to the left became quicker.
“I wonder what that means,” Brinley pondered out loud.
The security door to their right flew open. A red automacube rolled toward them, and its weapon’s muzzles fired.
Blam. Blam. Blam.
Bullets slammed into the frame around where they stood.
“Halt and prepare for processing by the Central Planning Office,” a mechanical voice came from the automacube. “You will receive no other warning.”
Piff. Piff. Piff. Piff.
Larissa and Brinley both fired nearly simultaneously. The pistol’s high velocity projectiles ripped into the front of the automacube, two on one side, just millimeters apart, and two directly into a weapon muzzle. The automacube was rocked by the impacts and then the internal fluids combusted. The explosion was tremendous as the automacube was ripped apart. Large tongues of flame jetted out as the drive wheels and axels were torn loose. The machine lifted a bit in the air and then dropped to the floor with a resounding crash.
Larissa and Brinley both instinctively took cover and backed away from the hallway.
After the flaming blast passed, Larissa commanded, “Move now,” and pushed Brinley toward the opposite door.
Brinley sprinted toward the door. She glanced back and Larissa was right behind her. The smoke from the burning automacube was filling the hallway, but then foam came praying out of the ceiling and suppressed the smoldering wreckage.
The security door sprang open as they approached, and slammed shut right afterward.
“Are we heading the right way?” Brinley asked.
“For now it is the only way,” Larissa responded.
The room they had entered was long and wide with an angled ceiling. There were supply crates stacked against one side of the room, while the other side had a floor conveyor which was not running. At the far side of the room was a doorway. The color pad next to that was flashing.
“That Phoenix is guiding us, but I am not sure to what end,” Brinley said. “The automacube did attack us, and that was just like what happened to the Free Rangers, except they did not have these pistol designed at Dome 17.”
“They are an effective weapon,” Larissa commented. “The L-RODs will also be effective. We need to strive for the memory core of TSI-19 so we can shunt the lattice over to my control. When that is done we will address many other issues.”
They hastened toward that door, but a section of the wall rotated outward, pushing the supply crates out of the way. Brinley expected an automacube, but was surprised when two people walked in. The male had crisp short black hair, a medium and clear complexion, and round brown eyes. He was wearing a uniform of dark blue with gold trim. There were red epaulets on his shoulders. The female wore a uniform which was slightly different from the male, but only in minor ways. She had perfect skin complexion, of a medium to dark tone, very symmetrical face, and a large brown eyes. Her black hair was precisely arranged.
“You will halt your activity immediately. You are scheduled for processing,” the female said as she raised her hand. She aimed a device at them.
“Androids. A midshipman and chief gefreiter,” Larissa stated and aimed her pistol.
The midshipman ducked and
discharged a weapon which shot out two threads of fine filament. They struck near to where Brinley had been standing. The electrical jolt they delivered could be heard as well as smelled. It barely missed Brinley as she dove away.
Piff. Piff.
Larissa fired the pistol.
The female android, the Chief Gefreiter, was struck and knocked back onto the floor conveyor. Her upper torso was punctured and fluids were leaking out. She fired her own weapon, but its filaments struck into the ceiling and bounced back down to the floor where the electricity discharged into the floor conveyor. That floor jerked and bucked as it started up.
“You must cease this senseless violence,” The midshipman commanded as he fired another set of filaments, this time toward Larissa.
Larissa ducked out of the way as the filaments struck into a supply crate.
Piff. Piff.
Brinley fired her pistol.
The head of the midshipman exploded into a vast multitude of particles of metal, pseudoflesh, polymers, and other internal materials. The android body fell in a heap.
“I doubt these CPO androids will use non-lethal means again,” Larissa said. “We need to hurry and escape.”
Brinley rushed toward the door where the flashing color pad was located. Just before she got there, the color pad stopped flashing. She was about to enter a code, when Larissa yelled.
“Wait! If that flashing was indicative of a safe passage, that door just became dangerous,” Larissa called. She then bounded over and looked at the conveyor which was still rolling along. There was a small square space with black soft strips hanging down form it. “Follow me.” Larissa jumped down and let the conveyor carry her under those strips and away into the darkness.
Brinley looked at the door and there was an explosion. The door rocked, but did not quite open. A flash of light seeped through the newly formed crack, but the door held. She turned and followed Larissa onto the conveyor and ducked down to pass into the tunnel.
The conveyor tunnel, which was suited for moving the supply crates, but not much larger, twisted and curved as the belt carried them along. It exited into a space, where again the black strips were hanging down. It was a chamber similar to the one they had left, so Larissa and Brinley stood and jumped off the conveyor belt.
Brinley rushed to the closest door and punched in a security override code. The color pad flashed three times and the door opened. After Larissa passed though, the door shut and made a clicking sound.
They were in a big concourse which was roughly twenty meters wide and extended in both directions for a long distance.
“Which way?” Larissa asked. “I am not sure where we are.”
A display lit up on the wall in front of them. ‘Follow the green arrows to TSI-19’s memory core.’ The display then went black with only a green arrow pointing to the right.
Larissa looked to the left and could see some figures a good distance away.
“You better run,” Larissa said. “I will buy us some time.”
Brinley sprinted away following the green arrow.
Larissa pulled the L-ROD from off her back and looked down the optics. She sighted in on the first android. He looked much larger in the optics than with her unassisted eye. “No sense in wasting an organic disruptor.” She shifted the lever and squeezed the trigger.
Piff.
The android went down. Before he even hit the floor, Larissa had shifted targets.
Piff.
The next android crumpled over, grasping its abdomen when the projectile had torn into it.
Piff. Piff. Piff.
Larissa fired until all the androids had retreated or were lying on the floor writhing in brokenness.
Two security automacubes came barreling out from a side corridor and began firing at Larissa’s position.
Larissa sprinted away as fast as her legs could carry her.
Blam. Blam. Blam.
Chunks of wall and floor and ceiling were ripped loose all around Larissa as she ran. None of the bullets struck her, but she dodged and weaved like she had never done so before.
She heard Brinley firing the other L-ROD somewhere ahead of her.
Wump. Wump. Piff. Piff. Piff.
Larissa did not look behind her to see the effect of Brinley’s marksmanship. She looked instead for where Brinley was located. She ran right past the ventilation duct where Brinley was crouched with the L-ROD.
“In here,” Brinley said as Larissa skidded to a stop and dove into the duct. “There was a green arrow on the floor here and the duct covering was gone,” Brinley said.
Piff. Piff. Wump.
“The organic disruptors do not have much effect on the androids. The impact is still knocking them down, but I hoped it would do more damage.”
“They are not organic, even though they appear that way,” Larissa answered.
A blue engineering automacube rolled up from the darkness of the vent. Larissa instantly had a weapon trained on it, but the front of the automacube was flashing green. With its manipulation arm it pointed up the slope of the duct.
“Up we go,” Larissa said and started to crawl up the duct.
The blue automacube rolled past her and past Brinley. It began to fasten a grille over the duct entrance.
“That one must be controlled by Phoenix Dominie,” Brinley said as she crawled after Larissa. She looked back and saw how the automacube was extending its drive wheels to the side and wedging itself into the duct. So in addition to the grill it had welded in place, it used its own chassis to make a blockage.
Larissa reached a junction of the ducts and straight ahead of her was an opening. She crawled up to that and carefully looked in, her pistol leading the way.
“Brinley, we made it,” Larissa said and holstered the pistol.
Brinley crawled up to her. “Yes, this is the place! Tennard has spoken to me of what this looks like, but I honestly never thought I would see it. The home of the primary artificial intelligence systems central memory cores. It is beautiful! A flower of life.”
“Sacred scene. Pythagorean geometry,” Larissa said in a hushed tone. “My mother spoke of this once….” Larissa had a faraway look in her blue eyes.
“Yes, the design linking the fundamental laws of the universe, all in one space. Physical laws, nonphysicality laws, geometrical laws, quantum mechanical laws, unified field laws, and even the laws of music and relationships are all are melded together here in that basic design. The universe in miniature with all its mysteries displayed.” Brinley spoke in reverent awe. “Harmonization of chaos, creating order.”
As the two women looked down from the their vantage point in the ceiling duct and surveyed the area, they could see that the chamber was large, composed of multiple evenly-spaced and overlapping circles. The floor, as seen from above, showed the outlines of those geometric circles. It was indeed a flower-like pattern with the symmetrical perimeter structure of a hexagon, all composed of circles.
Among those patterns there were twenty different elevated places in the large area. Each dais was evenly spaced from the others, and had a central memory core on its raised area.
“We need to get this job done,” Larissa said, and sloughed off her backpack, swung over the opening and out of the ductwork. She hung by her hands and then dropped into a room filled with machines. Brinley dropped both the backpacks to Larissa who was standing below. Brinley then dropped into the room as well.
“I have never seen so many central memory cores in one place,” Brinley exclaimed. “Nor such large ones.”
Each central memory core was set up a few steps from the floor, and was an upright apparatus consisting of a series of horizontal brass colored rings about ten centimeters wide and a half meter long. Each ring, or layer was separated from the others, so the interior clear permalloy column was visible. There were layers of those brass colored rings from top to bottom. Connection cables were at the top running into the ceiling, and bottom where they extended down into the floor. Ther
e were wires, cables, and tubes connecting into the rings from the various places, yet each central memory core had a sleek looking appearance. They exuded a quiet kind of power, dignity, and serenity.
Down the center, between the rings, was a clear permalloy pylon, or column, holding thick bright amber colored liquid which had numerous actively moving bubbles in it. There was a dim diamond looking shape at the very center, around which the bubbles swirled and passed up, down and all kinds of directions. The clear permalloy was smooth and flawless and the interplay between liquid, lights, and bubbles was almost musical. The amber glow from each central memory core reflected off the others giving the whole geometric shaped chamber a warmth and peace.
The Colony Ship Vanguard: The entire eight book series in one bundle Page 165
