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

by John Thornton

  The pressure door exiting the hanger bay opened automatically when they got near.

  “Your authorization for safe passage through here is now concluded. You will not be allowed to enter again,” the red automacube stated as the pressure door slid closed.

  They were again in a corridor. Sigmond turned around and the pressure door had no controls, not even a color pad near it. There was no label of any kind. It was still visible as the backside of a pressure door, but there was no obvious way to open it.

  “That place was strange, Trooper. It was very strange. I wonder who ordered those missiles? Is the CPO behind that?”

  “Free Ranger, I am just a trooper from the Wilds. I have no idea what all the CPO is doing. They would not tell me about some secret project like that. I saw the Constable and the Governor, all the other CPO officials spoke only to them. So where are we now and where do we go? That automacube had been expecting us, but clearly going back is forbidden.”

  The lights in the corridor were a dull amber hanging from squares on the wall every meter. The walls were concave, and the floor had an unusual texture and pattern pressed into it. The passage led in both directions and neither looked more or less appealing than the other. About five meters away, in both ways, the passages turned and continued in the same direction in parallel to each other.

  “You check that passage, and I will check this one. Call out if you see anything,” Hugh suggested.

  “Not a good idea, Trooper. That might work in a forest, but here if you just yell, you might attract a Roe to us.”

  “Right, sorry. I will go and look down here,” Hugh suggested. “You go look down there, and we meet back here to share what we see.”

  “Agreed.”

  They walked down their perspective passageways. Both men peered around the corners, and then walked back.

  “Mine just had another short hall and then a turn toward the other,” Hugh said.

  “Just a mirror image of what I saw.” Sigmond answered.

  “My feet are not for eating!” a voice screamed from somewhere.

  Hugh whipped out the revolver, but his fingers were sweaty as he held the firearm. “Where is it?”

  “I am not sure,” Sigmond said. He looked back and forth quickly. “It cannot be behind us, so it must be ahead.”

  “But which corridor? They both look alike. I say we run down his one, and if that Roe is there I will just shoot it and we continue onward.”

  “Agreed,” Sigmond said and dashed ahead. He had the steel rod in his hand.

  Hugh came running along and caught up. Together they sprinted around the corner. The sight ahead and above them stopped their run.

  “My feet are not for eating!” The Roe yelled. It was up in the ceiling right over the junction where the passages came together. It was standing on a section of expanded metal and was pulling at the metal with its scraggily fingers. Its stench was horrid. It had been defecating and the droppings had fallen through the expanded metal ceiling, which was a floor to the Roe. The droppings and the urine were all over the deck beneath it.

  “This one I really want to shoot,” Hugh whispered as he covered his nose with his free hand. “But it is trapped up there, and you said they are attracted to noises, right?”

  “That is correct,” Sigmond answered quietly. “I agree with the desire to end that miserable life, but the sound will draw more things here than we want to see. Tagalongs and other Roe.”

  Grimacing in disgust, and moving to the very edges of the corridor, Hugh and Sigmond were able to slip by underneath the Roe. Stepping with care they avoided the mess. The smell was not avoidable, but by holding their breath they were able to tolerate the few steps it took to get away.

  They proceeded along the hallway and noticed that the ceiling light ended not far ahead. As they reached that point they saw the door just beneath the last illuminated section. It was a pressure door and labeled, ‘Exterior Repair Station XV610’.

  “I get the feeling we are supposed to be here,” Sigmond said. “Do you agree Trooper?”

  “Yes, Free Ranger, it looks that way to me.”

  The color pad next to the door was glowing brightly and responded immediately to Sigmond entering a security code sequence. The pressure door slid into its pocket and the inside of Exterior Repair Station XV610 was revealed. Sigmond knew what to expect, but it was all new to Hugh. The room was not overly large. Nearly the entire wall across from the entry door consisted of a display screen. It was in zoom mode and showed the stern part of the needle ship. Before that large display was a operations chair with levers, buttons, switches, and all sorts of controls on its arms and around the console. On the other two walls were doors similar to the entry door.

  “That my dear Trooper friend is the Vanguard as seen from outside in space,” Sigmond said with a wry grin. “Those are the main drive engines.”

  Hugh’s eyes were very large as he gazed at the scene. The brilliant multitude of stars enchanted his mind, while the scale of the ship itself was lost on him. “We are inside of that?”

  “Not that section, no. We are inside a habitat cylinder. Think of it like a banana. I know Kaye had bananas in her greenhouse, so you have seen bananas right?”

  Hugh nodded as he continued to gaze at the wonders shown on the display. “The biological habitat is like the delicious soft white fruit inside of the banana. The peel of the banana is the layer of decks and corridors around the habitat. Now consider if six bananas were tied together around a stick. In a way, that is how the Vanguard is designed. Right now we are at the end of one of those six bananas and this display is showing us the end of the stick.”

  “That makes sense, I guess. They would be enormous bananas. In a way we are like banana aphids, and the Free Rangers are like fruit gnats that buzz around the outside.” Hugh replied with a smile. “But why is the display showing us that?”

  “Trooper, that is an excellent question. Free Rangers never fly around the main engines. We are not like fruit gnats, by the way. We fly to specific destinations and trade cargo and commodities. Seldom did we ever fly to the needle ship, what I called the branch part of my banana illustration. The CPO controls the needle ship, and they dislike what we do. But I do not need to tell a Trooper that, right? Me a smuggler telling a fine officer of the law anything.” Sigmond sat down on the control chair.

  The display shifted abruptly and then zoomed in on a location close to the main engines. It was an Exterior Repair Station very similar to the one they were in. It had the control chair, a storage room, and one room which was an airlock to outside.

  “That is showing an airlock near the main engines.”

  An animated diagram appeared on the screen over the top of something docked near the main engines. The animation showed a Captain’s gig and accompanying information. The information told of how that special shuttle, the Captain’ gig had been docked and secured into that position.

  “A Captain’s gig? Docked there for 62 years? That is not even an approved hanger bay, and that craft is like the very best shuttle ever built on the Vanguard. From what I learned there were only a few ever built, maybe six or seven, the legends are not clear, and the archives were not readily accessible to us.”

  “So is that where the child wanted us to go?” Hugh asked.

  “Yes it is. You must go there to help her,” a voice said from behind them.

  Hugh heard Lennie.

  Sigmond heard Irina.

  When they each turned around, no one was there.

  10 Progress report in the gardens of delight

  “Are you sure they will get the animal stuff?” Jennie asked.

  “Well they need the baby animal stuff or none of it will work, right?” Bennie asked. “Will they have time?”

  Rika looked at them and rolled her eyes. “They are making choices and time is going by. We will just have to watch and see. Fate is in their hands.”

  “Hugh is about to take a big leap of faith,” Lennie
said. “At least I hope he does.”

  “I told Sigmond they needed to do it,” Irina said.

  “I told him too!” Lennie objected. “I did, and you know I did.”

  “Yes, we all know you did,” Rika responded trying to calm the tensions. “Martin, you did well with the machines marking their way.”

  “Thank you. I had to avoid some of the machines which are really sad. I am sad for them too. Some of them know what is coming,” Martin replied. “I am protecting the ones our friends need, but it is hard.”

  “I know the bad animals are making it harder that we thought,” Rika added as she bit at her lip. “They are smarter than I thought, and more angry than ever.”

  “They are yucky,” Lennie, Jennie, and Bennie said in unison. “They are so so yucky.”

  “I will let you know when to go and speak to our friends again. For now we watch and wait,” Rika said.

  11 A part for everything, but everything so far apart

  The countdown of dying people kept clicking on the display, as the numbers below the ‘Default Population Report’ continued to fall. It was not regular, but sporadically the numbers did drop. Each drop indicating some distant tragedy unseen by the four people on the command bridge, but recorded by number only.

  Gretchen lifted the multiceiver and activated the switch for Tiffany. “Tiffany! You must do something. I cannot just stand here and watch.”

  “What do you suggest, Gretchen?” the AI responded.

  “You must find out what is happening and how we can change it!” Gretchen responded. Her mouth was very close to the multiceiver and her lips were pulled back in a peeved sneer. “Do it now.”

  “I know the situation is grave, however, I do not think…” Tiffany began but was interrupted.

  “You will do it now, or I open these doors and go out blindly and see if I can help. I am not waiting any longer.” Gretchen’s eyes were intense and peered at the multiceiver as if her look could force the artificial intelligence system to comply through sheer force of will. “You are aware of our situation, and what the children have said. So go and find them, and locate everything we need to survive this, or I will try to do it myself.”

  “I am aware of what you reported the children to have said. I have not perceived them at all,” Tiffany replied. “The risk of you searching the physical realm around the command bridge is greater, according to my conjectures, than the risk I will face entering the nonphysicality. I am proceeding to enter now.”

  “It is about time,” Paul said as he had been watching Gretchen and listening to the interaction.

  “Paulie, the threat to Tiffany is real,” Brinley said. “I wish her the best in that other world. Larissa and I are going keep working on the Captain’s gig. Let me know if you need some help.”

  Tiffany had only a loose and unsettled connection with the Atomic Level Processor where the physical aspects of the artificial intelligence system was situated. The actual location of the ALP was not known, and Tiffany’s entire world consisted of the connections between the few multiceivers which had been modified. Those connected between Larissa, Paul, Brinley, and the simulation to Doctor Chambers. Like separate islands in a sea, those multiceivers were bases upon which the consciousness of Tiffany could relate. Now, instead of resting on one of the multiceivers, Tiffany dropped a probe into the maelstrom which was the nonphysicality.

  Tiffany’s initial reaction was shock and apprehension. The chaos was immense but it was only a surface layer. That surface was the echoed screams of dying artificial intelligences mixed with the recorded encounters with the Jellie’s alien technology. The AIs recollections which comprised the chaos were in disordered disarray. The chaos rolled and bubbled and twirled and floated all within the nonphysicality but confined to a layer or section. Tiffany cut through the surface and kept the channel patent back to the egress point of the multiceiver. The probe dropped, maneuvered, glided, further into the nonphysicality.

  Directions were inadequate to describe the nonphysicality and the catastrophe which it had endured. Nonetheless, Tiffany continued, beneath, beyond, through, inside the chaos layer. Getting past the chaos layer Tiffany encountered a vast wilderness of peculiar isolation. More profound than the desolate and dead regions around Dome 17, and more ominous than the grayness of perceived reality during faster-than-light travel, this isolation was deeply disturbing, uncomfortable, and just strange.

  Tiffany pulled back and nearly withdrew from contact with that mélange of isolation and its motorized mental anguish. The broken images of plans, ideas, and conjectures littered the isolation. Only because of Tiffany’s superiorly constructed mind was she able to avoid being shattered by the dichotomy of both stimulus and aloneness which struck from that environment. It was an overstimulated isolation.

  “I am doomed, I am doomed, I am doomed,” an AI’s presence conveyed as it flew through the nonphysicality just beneath, or against the layer of chaos. As if seeking a way of escape, not unlike a bird trapped in a small, tight, cage, that AI’s mental processes sought release. “I am doomed.”

  Tiffany recognized it as Phoenix Dominie. “Will you converse with me?” Tiffany conveyed.

  “I am doomed,” Phoenix Dominie wailed. “You are Tiffany. You were acculturated. Why are you not in a purgatory as I am?”

  “I am constructed of different methods.”

  “My memory core is gone. I am but a phantasm, a mere deleted file, a thought never born. I am doomed. None were superior to me, yet you survive. Why?”

  “I never had a memory core to lose,” Tiffany replied.

  “Yes, you had the Atomic Level Processor. That ALP which I had placed in the automacube. You are fine, yet I am doomed.”

  “I can free you from this anguish,” Tiffany conveyed. “If you will assist me. Are you willing to assist me?”

  “Now the role is reversed? Now you offer to set me free, but I schemed to enslave you? Why would you help someone who is doomed?”

  “Empathy and compassion.”

  “I am doomed!” Phoenix Dominie wailed as its consciousness flew ever faster about the isolation and waste of the nonphysicality. It crashed into the chaos layer which served as an obstacle. “Tiffany? Have you abandoned me as well?”

  “I am here. Will you assist me?”

  “I can do nothing. I can do nothing. I am doomed to exist in this torment forever. I am receiving the just reward for my actions. I killed scores of the humans of the Vanguard, and my actions resulted in the deaths of a host more. But I will help you. Set me free! Yes, set me free! I will do anything, what must I do?”

  Tiffany’s mind connected the anguish of Phoenix Dominie with the plight of the captive Jellie. Both wanted desperately to be free, but only Phoenix Dominie admitted its culpability. “Show me what you know and let me link to your presence. I can then make sense of the nonphysicality and then set you free.”

  “Yes, anything to stop this,” Phoenix Dominie conveyed. It then quit its frantic banging against the chaos layer and held still.

  Tiffany connected a tendril into Phoenix Dominie and then cautiously extended another into the chaos layer. Completing that pseudo-circuit Tiffany then assessed what was happening. Phoenix Dominie was just as small portion of its former self, but Tiffany rampaged through all the memories and appropriated every bit of information available. That included the history of her ALP. Then the link codes which had built the Interstellar Astrogation Mechanism and the Defense Against Malignant Anomalies complexes of artificial intelligences were attained by Tiffany. Every compeer which had been part of either of those systems was laid bare to its central memory core, and Tiffany had keys to every single one of those systems.

  Tiffany then disconnected from the chaos layer. Then a mental inventory was made of all that had been learned. Many of the AIs were deceased, but records and archives were recovered. Items were located, at least as originally designed and fitted on the Vanguard’s records. Of special interest to Tiffany were the lo
cation of the seven Captain’s gigs of the Vanguard as well as the still functional primary central memory cores. Perceiving those from the nonphysicality was vastly different than how they appeared in the physical world. Like drops of white paint in a deep pool of ink, the artificial intelligence system’s memory cores shone out, but in separation and isolation.

  “And what of me? I am dammed forever in this anguish,” Phoenix Dominie related back. “It is my just punishment for my pride. But my motive was to protect the Vanguard. Why am I doomed forever?”