The Colony Ship Conestoga : The Complete Series: All Eight Books

by John Thornton

  Khin kept his revolver aimed at the door, and sniffed again. There were other smells, but it was hard for him to distinguish them as the air was moving away from him. He knew that rats could smell him coming when the ventilation was moving the air in the wrong way, and here it clearly was wrong for his hunt. The monster would be able to smell him, and know where he was far more readily than Khin could determine where the monster was located.

  Digging out a bit of cheese from his pouch, Khin smeared it along the edge of the door, right where the crack was located. Khin expected the door to spring back into its pocket at any moment, because the color control pad next to it was dark and unpowered. That meant the door was working on its springs, as Khin called them, and a good whack could open it or close it. He knew the monster had opened it in some manner. Khin wondered silently, ‘Did the monster close the door, or did the door just close on its own?’

  Khin waited for a bit, hoping the cheese would lure the monster out. But it did not. Eagerness, and anxiety mixed together in Khin’s mind and he knew the lost children were depending on him, as well as his promise to Vesna.

  Revolver in one hand, he placed his other hand’s fingers into the crack on the door. Nothing bit or clawed him, and so he pulled. The door did spring into its pocket, and then start to slide gently back closed. Khin slipped past the door.

  Overhead was a flickering and sputtering light. He was standing off to the side of a platform which was above a lowered area, a pit of sorts. The air was moving toward that pit. The monster’s dark blood was sprinkled in drops all about the door. Khin thought the monster must have been standing there for a while, as the droplets were more numerous here than in the hall. There were also smeared footprints.

  Looking around, Khin saw vertical pipes which descended down from the ceiling and into the pit. Down in that same direction, he could hear a fan turning. Glancing around again, he did not see any place nearby where the monster could hide, so he stepped away from the door. Shadows were cast from the flickering lights, but Khin looked down into the pit.

  “The lair!” Khin exclaimed. He looked around, ready to fight, but the monster was not to be seen. He looked another time, sniffed, and also listened intently. Still no sign, sight, or sound of the monster. Its stink was there, but that was not a fresh smell. He put the revolver away. “Find a monster lair, burn out every hair.”

  Khin climbed down to the pit, and looked more closely at the dead bodies which were all restrained against the walls of the pit. There were two bodies against one wall, and five others, against a different wall. All of them were in various states of decomposition. Khin knew none of these bodies were the lost children, as all were far too rotted away to have been a recent murder. He also recognized that all the bodies were of children, roughly four to twelve years old. The clothing that was still present on some of them testified that the victims were from all three tribes of people. Khin’s anger was rolling inside him. A collar made from softer metal encircled the neck on each body. Those collars were tied to the walls by ropes.

  Khin walked over and knelt down by the bodies. “I am sorry little ones, that no one protected you. This was a horrible evil. I will end this.” He reached over and shut down the fan. As he turned the levers to shut it off, plates dropped down covering the grille. He could hear the fan blades slowly grinding to a halt. “No more air goes out.”

  Khin assessed the pit and saw how the platform, where the door was and which also led away from the pit, was moveable. It had a retractable floor which was pulled all the way back. He climbed up and out of the pit and opened a wall panel. There he tried the manual cranks, and the floor was still operational. He nodded.

  “Yes, burn out every hair.” Khin climbed down into the pit again, and looked all around. He found the spot he was looking for, and with a few flicks of his knife blade, he unfastened a section of one pipe. A bit of water dribbled out as he disconnected the pipe. Inside there he slipped open a compartment. Doing that exposed a place of small energy conduits. It was a long reach and stretch for his hands, especially while the wounds on his back were hurting from such a spread. Elbow deep in the pipes, he feared the monster would attack, but he pressed on anyway. Khin pulled several of those energy conduits apart, doing it all by feel only, as he was pressed up against the pipe. Nonetheless, he ever so carefully rearranged them. They started to glow and put off heat.

  Quickly he pulled his hands out of the pipe, climbed back out of the pit, and grabbed the manual controls. As fast as he could he cranked the platform floor shut, sealing off the site of such horrific carnage.

  By then, the heat was rising, and only because the floor was permalloy did it stop the full effect of the thermal reaction from radiating extreme heat to where he stood.

  “Find a monster lair, you must burn out every hair. Children who were killed, may you rest now. I am sorry you were killed,” Khin said and nodded at his own work. “Now to find that monster, and end this.”

  He walked off quickly, while the former monster lair was incinerated in the spot he had sealed over. The edges were glowing red from the heat. That fire in the energy conduit increased in temperature, and spread backward along the energy channels. It could not pass the permalloy covering Khin had put in place, but it was spreading via the utilities. It was not to be contained in the monster’s lair.

  Following the trail of droplets, Khin left that place of the monster’s lair. As he reached a distance away, he could again smell the lingering stink of the monster. He hurried to chase it down. So much time had passed he wondered if too many days had gone by. He also knew he was on the track of a monster, but he was unsure if it was the same monster which had stolen the children. Khin had hunted rats so many times and was well aware that where there was one rat seen, many others were nearby. Goats were also like that. Seldom did goats ever go off on solo adventures, but usually stayed within hearing range of the other goats. “Are monsters like that too? Is there a monster pack down here?”

  He pressed on, and as he did, the corridor got warmer. That was not unexpected as Khin knew basically where he was, since they had left the Hallway of Forever. The halls were getting hotter as he kept walking. The sputtering light was dwindling off behind him, and amber emergency lights, which nothing could grow under, were supplying more of the illumination. There was no growth medium on the floors, and no mushrooms growing up anywhere. The other times he had ventured this far into the bowels of the needle ship, he had still been in places where there were rats, mushrooms, and the dim lighting which fed the plants. But as he knew, the Hallway of Forever went on for a long long distance. He thought it ran from the beginning to the end of his world, or as he could say in wizard’s talk, the length of the needle ship. He had come out of the Hallway of Forever somewhere new, and it felt like he was on a different side of the Burning Netherworld.

  One side of the corridor was especially hot, and the large doors there were baking with radiated heat. Khin knew better than to open those kinds of doors. Khin kept sniffing, and looking at the deck for the black droplets of monster blood. Turning down a hallway, away from the heat, he saw a bulkhead door. There was some fur and hair stuck on the side of the door, which had not sealed properly as it shut.

  Khin pointed his revolver and was about to open the door when Sandie spoke to him via his private channel in his earpiece. “Khin, I know you want me to be quiet, but I am with you and tracking you. Vesna is moving toward your position, and I am helping her to get there. A security automacube and a medical automacube are also coming toward you. You may want to wait before opening this door.”

  “Sandie, spirit-ghost, or I should say spirit-friend, I cannot let those children be hurt, if there is a chance they are alive. I must stop this monster now. Besides,” Khin laughed a little, “cubie red will make you dead.”

  “This red cubie is a friend,” Sandie replied.

  Khin’s smile was broad. He pushed and the bulkhead door opened.

  Dropping down from abo
ve him, the monster swiped with its clawed hands. It was taller than Khin, and moved very quickly.

  Blam!

  Khin fired just as his hand was smacked by the clawed paw. Instead of resisting the blow, Khin moved with it and rolled off to the side of the corridor. It was a small place, and at the other end was a doorway with some kind of writing in white letters.

  “Monsters must die!” Khin yelled as he straightened up and aimed.

  But the monster grabbed his revolver and shoved it upward.

  Blam! Blam!

  The shots ricocheted around, but struck nothing. The monster squeezed hard on the revolver and Khin’s fingers. It was gripping him with both of its paws. It was forcing his arms higher and higher with its brute strength.

  Blam! Blam!

  Khin squeezed the trigger again and again with his one hand. With his other hand, he plunged his knife straight ahead and into the monster’s belly as hard as he could. It immediately let go of his gun hand, and he dropped, still clutching the revolver.

  The monster struck at him with a mighty swipe. The claws raked Khin across the face as he dodged and turned. Red blood came gushing from the injures, and one of Khin’s eyebrows was ripped apart. He dropped to the deck as the monster rushed to the other side of the short corridor.

  Khin tried to see, but the blood pouring over his face prevented that.

  Blam! Blam! He fired blindly.

  He heard a door hiss, and recognized that sound. Without really looking or knowing where he was, or what the monster was doing Khin rushed toward where the hissing door sound was. He crashed into the back of the monster, its tail bending and snapping. Together in a jumble, man and monster passing through the threshold. The crash knocked a pouch off his belt, and it fell into the door’s track.

  The furry back of the monster was right at Khin’s face, and with his gun hand he tried to align a shot, but with his other hand he jabbed the knife into the furry frame.

  Together, they tumbled into the large chamber. Khin was slashing and hacking with his knife, and parts of the monster were falling to the sides.

  Khin heard children screaming, and it sounded like a boy and a girl, but he could not make out their words. The light was brighter than he expected, but his one eye was saturated in blood and he could not see from it.

  A hard foot kicked him in the thigh, and that knocked him back against the sidewall next to the door. He fell onto a workstation.

  “Mariamne?” a girl’s voice screamed.

  “Help us Uncle Khin!” a boy cried out.

  Khin felt something strike him again, and that pushed him off the work station. There was a furry blob in front of him, with a bright light behind it. Khin worried where the children were, but he knew that thing was the monster.

  Blam! He fired up at it. The revolver was almost touching the monster’s fur.

  The thing’s shoulder tore away and spun the monster about.

  The children screamed in tones Khin had never heard before.

  Khin, knowing he had hurt the monster, pushed himself up and went after it. With the back of his hand he forced the drying blood from his face, and saw more clearly what was there.

  Dmitar was standing in front of another door. Claire was slumped to the side of that same door. Both were whimpering, screaming, crying, and trembling all at the same time.

  Looking over, Khin saw the monster. A huge flap of its fur was hanging loose, at the shoulder, and that same arm was hanging limp. Bizarre silvery metal stays and rods were exposed beneath that loose flap of fur. Some light brown materials were visible under where the fur was hanging.

  The monster leaped toward the children.

  Khin pulled the trigger.

  Click. Click. Click.

  The monster grabbed, with its working limb, for Dmitar who was closest. He had a water glass I his hand. He flung it into the monster’s long snout, and the glass shattered. The mouth and snout did not change. They did not change at all. No flinching, no bleeding, no grimacing. The mouth did not even close. The black reflective eyes of the monster still looked down at him.

  At that instant, Claire dove at the monster’s legs and hit them just above the feet. The monster was knocked forward, tripping over Claire. Khin had dove into it from behind, slamming it face first to the deck. He was on top of it from behind as it landed on the deck. Claire scrambled out from beneath the flailing limbs of the monster, with Khin sitting on it. A stub of a tail jutted upward out of the monster’s back. Fur was missing, and broken metal was all the remained of that monster’s appendage.

  “Run!” Khin commanded. He swung the revolver down, its steel barrel connecting with the spot on the monster’s head where the pointed ears came up. One of the ears broke off, and wires dangled from where it had come loose. A hole was revealed through which Khin could see a space. He hammered the barrel down again and again.

  “Flee!” Khin yelled to the children, and both Claire and Dmitar moved away a bit, but stayed in the repository.

  The monster’s legs were kicking, but Khin remained and rode the monster as it tried to get up. He could hear some odd sounds coming from its body. He plunged his free hand down into the hole where the ear had been, and was shocked that there was an empty space. For a moment, Khin wondered what kind of monster he had. Then his hand felt hair. He clenched it and yanked.

  A woman screamed and the voice came from inside the monster. Khin gripped the hair in his hand as hard as he could and with his other hand hammered the thing in front of him with the revolver’s barrel again. One of the glossy black eyes of the monster broke loose, and rolled across the floor.

  The monster kicked a mighty kick, and rolled to the side. Khin did not let go, but was carried over with it. As he landed, the monster’s still working arm jabbed into him. His buttocks was pierced by the sharp claws. Yet, he settled into it, knowing he was immobilizing part of the monster. As they wrestled, more of the monster’s head separated, fell apart, and broke off. Only a small metal frame, with some fragments of fur, and the lower jaw were still connected. The fur had been ripped from the metal frame. The underneath was now visible over the one shoulder, up most of the neck and surrounding the head.

  “Mariamne?” Claire screamed as she recognized the woman’s face from within the monster.

  “The creature has me!” Mariamne yelped. “Help your Auntie and…”

  Dmitar jumped forward and punched her in the mouth, his arm reaching through the frame of the monster suit to do so.

  Claire jumped onto the suit’s legs and hung on as tightly as she could, trying to prevent Mariamne from standing. She deftly avoided the claws on the feet. Yet, Mariamne, from within the monster suit continued to kick out and try to stand. Claire dig her hands into the suit seeking some fastener, closure, or way to get inside the fake fur.

  Khin, his hand full of gray hair, refused to release his grip, but from his position he could not get a full swing using the revolver as a club. The wounds to his back had split open, his face was still bleeding, and the sharp, but fake, claws were piecing his butt. He hammered down again, but each blow kept striking the metal frame which had held the suit in place. The servos and mini-motors on the suit were whining in protest, as Mariamne tried to stand.

  “You horrible person!” Dmitar yelled as he again punched into the monster suit and struck her face.

  “Got it!” Claire yelled as her snaking hand had found a way between the flaps of the monster suit. She shut down the power pack on Mariamne’s back. The servo motors quit whining, and the depowered monster suit lay still.

  “A phony monster!” Khin yelled. He still had a firm hold on Mariamne’s head by her hair, and he was unwilling to let go. He did not know what to do, but wanted the children to be safe.

  Dmitar began ripping the monster fur off the exoskeleton. Claire found Khin’s knife and began slicing off the connections where the external suit had locked onto the exoskeleton.

  Each time Mariamne began to speak, Dmitar raised his
fist, while Khin shook her head violently.

  “You shut up, phony monster!” Khin yelled. He was getting weak from blood loss, but feared the phony monster would attack the children if he passed out or let her go.

  Vesna came limping in, revolver at the ready. What she saw was surprising, shocking, and almost unbelievable. If not for the flowing of so much blood from her beloved Khin, it would have looked silly. A ripped and torn apart fake monster suit, with an older woman inside of it. The look on that woman’s face was pure evil, and Vesna knew she had indeed found the real monster. She rushed over.

  A blood covered Khin was holding onto the hair of the woman in the monster suit, yet he was also sitting on one of its arms. Two children were ripping the costume apart. That very anger older woman was staring out of the suit at her. Malevolence shinned in her eyes.

  “You are the monster!” Vesna yelled. “Sandie told me to hurry.” Vesna leveled her own revolver at Mariamne’s face