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

by John Thornton

  “How do you know all this?”

  “You have a good soul, but it I overcome by pain, fear and sorrow. I can help relieve that and heal you of those thorns. They will no longer haunt you, but the scars will remain. There is the journey you must take,” Irina said and again her words quaked a bit as she spoke.

  “How can a mere young woman, a child even, do anything like that,” Sigmond said. As he said that, Irina stepped over and lifting both of her hands she touched his forehead on each side. His emotions settled, and while his memories were still vivid and clear, he had a new perspective on what he had endured. He recalled the pain, but was no longer trapped in it. The pain was a memory. The sorrow also shifted from an all-consuming oppression into a coherent and manageable memory. The fear slid away and was replaced by comfort and a sense of purpose. He recalled all the emotions he had been enduring, but now they were behind him. He had hope. A different fate was possible.

  Sigmond fell to his knees and sobbed. Irina continued to touch his temples and forehead.

  “You will find Hugh at the base of the trail which leads up and out of the canyon and to the forest. You will know which path as you walk it. You must go now and work with him on his quest,” Irina said. “The two of you will go to see Brinley.”

  “Brinley?” Sigmond said with distaste, but then his mouth changed and he repeated her name. “Brinley. Yes, I know Brinley. I have known her for a long time.”

  Memories ran through Sigmond’s mind of times in the Free Rangers before the slaughter. He recalled wonderful events of seeing Jodie’s Minstrels. In his mind he laughed again at Feegin the Thief as it was performed. He thought of Tennard and all the teaching he had given. The machines they had worked on, sweated over, and repaired. Then Brinley’s image came to his mind again, and he saw her wide smile and her pretty face. He too smiled.

  “When you meet Hugh, you both will know the journey you are to travel together,” Irina said and her voice faded away as gently as did her touch.

  “Yes, I will help him to find Brinley.” Sigmond stood up. “When do I go?”

  Sigmond looked around. Irina was not anywhere to be seen. He rubbed his forehead, and he could still feel the places where she had touched him. He had never had that kind of sensation before.

  “Irina?” Sigmond said.

  There was no response.

  Sigmond rushed around the house and entered. “Kaye? Did that girl come in here?”

  Sigmond saw Kaye sitting in the chair. Her hands were neatly folded across in front of her and her head was resting on them.

  “Kaye?” Sigmond said in a hushed voice. “Do you need to go to bed and sleep?”

  There was no response.

  Sigmond walked over to the table and placed his hand on Kaye’s shoulder. “Kaye? Did you see that girl?”

  There was no response.

  Sigmond felt her hand there was no response. He gently lifted her and head saw that she was dead.

  “Oh my,” Sigmond sighed out. “You were my friend.”

  Sigmond looked all around but there was no sign of any kind of cause of her death. Then his eyes fell on the sack, tool belt, and cloak on the countertop. He stepped over and saw that there was also a note. He picked it up and read:

  “Dear Sigmond,

  I know that our time together is ending. I am going away to be with my sister. Fate has again given you another chance, and I hope you decide to make the most of the opportunity. What little I have is yours. An automacube will come and take my body away to become nourishment for the trees and plants of the canyon. You need make no arrangements for that, it is already set. The far end of the canyon has the exit you need back to the world of machines and corridors and the shuttles you so deeply missed here. Let go of your anger, sorrow, and pain. Embrace the future and have hope.

  -Kaye”

  Sigmond wiped tears from his eyes. He took the tool belt and strapped it around his waist. He hooked the sack with the food on it, and placed the cloak around his shoulders.

  As he stepped out from the house, he heard the sound of an automacube rolling up from the lower part of the canyon. It was a green one with a brown stripe around its middle. Sigmond left the door open and walked briskly back around the house. He considered using a poitevin donkey to carry him on the journey, but he had not seen any of them for several days, and he had never been able to summon them like Kaye had done.

  He walked past the garden and onto the path that lead upward and toward the rim of the canyon. The darkness of the night covered over the odd sensations and emotions he was struggling with. He had seen so many of his friends and family die in the massacre, yet somehow leaving Kaye behind in an intact house, from a death without any violence, was almost more unsettling. He looked back and could almost imagine that he could just walk back and find Kaye tending the gardens or cooking or meditating. Yet he knew she was gone.

  And so he walked.

  He took turns on the trail without consciously thinking of which way to go. He strolled along and all the while there were no sounds of the animals of the night. No coyotes yipping. No owls hooting. No mule deer ran across the path. Even though Sigmond had grown up as a Free Ranger living in a safe zone around the hanger bay, he had come to appreciate some of the sounds of night in the canyon. Now they were all missing. His own footfalls seemed to be all that was heard as he walked.

  Sigmond’s trek took him around and between various gorges, small valleys and through a low area of land between hills and bluffs. He realized that he had circled back and was now at the bottom of the canyon near a stream which flowed through it. He instinctively turned and took a way up a small gully and saw an outcropping of rock with someone reclining underneath. In the dark he could just make out that the person was a man in a trooper uniform.

  “Hello? Are you Hugh?” Sigmond said. “A child told me to meet with you.”

  5 Further Conversation in the Gardens of delight

  Rika approached Irina and said, “You did deliver the message to Sigmond?”

  “I am older than you, even though you forget that,” Irina said, although she did tremble and bit her lip a bit as she said that.

  “I know that. I am sorry to sound mean. Forgive me,” Rika said. Her narrow green eyes showed compassion on her friend. “It is just that time is short and there is so much for them to all do.”

  “I know. I had to touch Sigmond, and that was odd. I think he will try his best,” Irina responded. “Kaye has gone to see Brenda.”

  “I know,” Rika responded.

  “Will Hugh be ready?” Irina asked. “I know he is passionate enough, but is he ready?”

  Lennie approached. “I spoke to him, and just had to nudge him a bit. He is drawn toward the plan, but his duty gets in the way.”

  “Like Paul’s fears get in the way,” Jennie said as she too joined the conversation.

  “Paul is at least honest about his fears,” Rika said. “He does not put on a show for everyone else and pretend to be brave.”

  “They are all afraid, but just show it differently,” Irina said.

  “Those bad animals are yucky,” Bennie added. “Is it time for me to give the message to Gretchen?”

  Rika closed her eyes, and pondered for a moment. “Not quite yet. But it will happen soon. The other stuff needs to be in place first. They will only get the one chance to do this.”

  The children all looked at each other as they stood in a circle. Their faces grew dim and washed out. They reached out and held hands.

  “Is there a chance it will work?” Bennie finally asked. “Is fate what must be or only what might be”

  The others all looked at him. They nodded their heads yes, but their eyes betrayed the doubts and worries they all had.

  6 opening the Captain’s Gig

  “That Jellie makes my skin itch and my stomach rumble,” Paul said as he walked away from the laboratory where the captive Jellie was held.

  “It is bizarre looking,” Gretchen re
plied. “I still wonder where that child you saw went. All the other doors from this corridor are still sealed.”

  “So were the doors to the command bridge, but that did not stop Jennie from opening them,” Paul answered.

  “So where did Jennie go?” Gretchen asked.

  “I am not sure, and I have no idea why she said that Jellie needed to speak to me. I cannot stand to see it, and threatening to kill us was just what I needed to hear.”

  “Paul, perhaps if we head back to the command bridge, where you first saw Jennie we can figure out where she went.”

  “We can try that, but I am just saying our security is flawed if a child can get in here. Jennie is probably no threat, but if she could get here what is to stop some vicious Roe or some Jellies seeking to rescue its friend back there?”

  Larissa pulled Brinley aside and spoke to her while Paul and Gretchen walked back to the command bridge. “Paul has a point. If two children made it here, our position is compromised and we are essentially blind to our surroundings. We need to find some way to assess our situation and gain more intelligence on what is happening. Success in combat is about assessment, planning, implementation, and evaluation. We need to assess. For example, that elevator right outside the laboratory is now shut down, but did the child you saw come here that way? We just do not know.”

  “I am not sure. Everything is a giant mess,” Brinley said. “I think it might be best to go back to that gallery where all the primary AIs’ central memory cores are located. Martin might be in that place. You are I entered through there once. He likes machines. I did not see him when I was working on TSI-5, but there are many places to hide in there, especially in the condition it is in now. He did say he would tell the machines to open access for me to the Captain’s Gig, he may be talking to them in there. Or that might be another place he is hiding.”

  “He could have just left the way he arrived,” Larissa commented. “It is a puzzle and I am not in the mood for puzzles right now. We need answers. Back in that AI gallery, can you get me an interface with another AI? Perhaps one with something helpful to report? If we could get the scale model on the bridge operational we would be able to do scans of the damage to the Vanguard.”

  “We can already speak to Tiffany,” Brinley reminded her. Brinley lifted the multiceiver and activated it. “Tiffany?”

  The screen came on, “Yes, Brinley. How can I help?”

  “Tiffany, what is the status of the Vanguard? How badly damaged is the ship?” Brinley asked.

  “I am unable to answer that question, due to insufficient information. Two habitat cylinders are known to be destroyed, however beyond that it is unknown the extent of the damage,” Tiffany replied.

  “Can you interface with the lattice or other systems to find out?” Larissa asked as she too looked into the screen.

  “The nonphysicality is in chaos. That prevents me from any interfacing with other systems,” Tiffany reported.

  “That was what I expected,” Larissa said. “Thank you anyway Tiffany.”

  Brinley dropped the multiceiver. “We do have that AI overseeing the captive, TSI-5 which is now cooperating.”

  “Yes, well done on that. You promptly got that AI under control,” Larissa said. “Very good work.”

  Brinley was surprised by the unexpected praise. “As to interfacing with another primary AI in that gallery, I think you better come and see it for yourself. It is not like when we came here.”

  Brinley and Larissa walked into what Brinley had been calling the gallery of memory cores. The doorway had sustained damage, and they walked past that. The chamber, the gallery, was large, but the lights were very strange. When Larissa had last seen the gallery the central memory cores had basically been operating in concert, even though there were divisions. Now the gallery was bathed in varying shades of light coming off the central memory cores. The light was coming from multiple different sources, the central memory cores, as well as from the fixtures in the ceiling. There was flashing, and alternating colors and shifting intensity at a fast and irregular rate.

  Looking in, they saw one central memory core glowing the amber color Larissa knew meant it was operating nearly normally. It was the only one of the twenty that were doing that. “That amber glowing one is TSI-5, correct?”

  “Yes, I had to modulate some of the energy flow,” Brinley replied. “But you can see the rest are going rampant, except those three which look to be disabled.”

  Each central memory core sat on a raised dais. Each was an upright cylindrical apparatus, taller than a human with horizontal brass colored rings about ten centimeters thick and a half meter in diameter. There were seven or more layers of those brass colored rings encircling a central clear permalloy column or pylon which contained synthetic mechano-synaptic fluid. Connection cables were at the top and bottom. Each connection cable went out in neat symmetry.

  In three of the central memory cores, the fluid in the pylon was dark and not moving at all. Those were the ones Brinley indicated as disabled, to Larissa they looked dead, like a brown rotting tree in the evergreen forest. There was just something about them that projected a profound loss of vitality. In the others, the fluid was glowing in any manner of colors, from dull brown, to vibrant red, and lots of others. Some had fluid bubbling very rapidly, nearly like water boiling, while others had only slow globs or deformed bubbles of contrasting colored fluid moving up or down in no apparent pattern or method. The disabled memory cores had no movement inside them, while the others had movement within the fluids. Larissa thought of the human pulse as she looked at the moving fluids.

  “It was all so beautiful before when the system was functional,” Larissa said. “I can see what you mean by calling it a mess in here. Which ones control what functions?”

  Brinley walked over to the only display in the whole area. It was against the wall over a small countertop and chair. “I could not get the display here to respond.”

  “Then how did you fix TSI-5 when we needed it to study the Jellie captive?” Larissa asked.

  “I recalled that one as TSI-19,” Brinley pointed to one of the three now dark and disabled central memory cores. “The one at the center is TSI-1, and assuming that, I then made a guess on how they were arranged in here. Since they are on evenly-spaced and overlapping circles, as seen from above, in the geometric pattern, so I counted to the one which is TSI-5.”

  “Yes, the flower-like pattern with the symmetrical perimeter structure of a hexagon, all composed of circles,” Larissa responded. “So you guessed properly as we knew the designation of TSI-5. So which one do you work on next?”

  “I am really unsure. With TSI-5 we had a location and an interface to confirm what I did. Here I just have the locations, and no interface. I am not sure how to gauge my adjustments. Without the interface I am just as likely to disable the AI as I am to restore it to proper cooperation.”

  “This was like a flower of life,” Larissa said. “Now it is bedlam and anarchy. We will search this area for that child you saw, but I doubt he will be in here.”

  “Martin had to go somewhere,” Brinley replied.

  “Perhaps not as we expect,” Larissa answered. “So let us begin to search this forest of memory cores. There may be a rabbit hole that the child went down, now if we can just see it and find it in this confusion of light.”

  They searched through and around all the central memory cores. Despite the varying lighting and the odd shadows which were cast about, they found nothing. Martin was not there, and no open ducts, vents or other places were found where he might have gone. Even the ceiling passage where Brinley and Larissa had entered had been sealed over.

  Brinley finally said, “Paulie and Gretchen were teleported here, and we cannot forget that is a possibility, although I see no evidences of any kind of receiving pad like in the other room.”

  “That room is sealed from the command bridge and had the android bodies and automacubes blocking it. Did the child get around them?”
Larissa asked.

  “I do not see how, but it is possible,” Brinley answered.

  They then turned to observe closer the central memory cores themselves. From Brinley’s calculations and guesses on the artificial intelligence systems arrangement, TSI-19, TSI-11, and TSI-2 were disabled. Each of their clear fluid pylons were dark and without any movement or bubbles. Without being able to interface with the systems, neither Larissa nor Brinley knew which ship’s functions those AIs controlled, except for TSI-19 which had overseen the androids.

  “So of the twenty primary artificial intelligence systems, three are lost, and sixteen are not accessible?” Larissa asked.

  “I will try again,” Brinley said and sat down before the display screen. She adjusted controls, manipulated switches, and did get a chaotic lighted image to appear on the display screen after she plugged in a fusion pack, but it was a jumbled mess. “Nothing here we can use. We cannot interface with them from here. They may be, and probably are, functioning in some capacity and are likely running in default, safety, or maintenance modes right now. I just have no way of knowing which are which and how to proceed without an interface,” Brinley said.