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

by John Thornton

  “Tracking right for the largest remaining section of that Jellie satellite network,” Monika stated.

  Looking at the nose camera’s view, the purplish-blue glow of the satellites grew brighter and brighter. The missile would not detonate on one specific satellite, but instead was set to explode at the best location to do maximum damage to as many satellites as possible. The glow increased in intensity as the missile dashed toward the network. The other displays showed the sensor readings which gave a countdown and an animation of the missile in comparison to the Jellie network.

  The nose view grew too brightly purple and painful to watch. Jerome looked over and saw a very bright flash on the sensor reading display.

  “Impact! Detonation!” Jerome yelped. “The warhead worked! Big explosion!”

  “The network is going dark!” Monika cheered. “They are all winking out.”

  The purple satellites were indeed diming and some were dark.

  “ALERT! BRACE FOR IMPACT!” Eris screamed above the jubilation. “The Jellie ship closing….”

  “Jellie ship?” Jerome barely had time to grab the arms of his chair before it felt like the entire Conestoga flipped about.

  “Gravity manipulation was lost for a moment. Inertia suppression overwhelmed,” Sandie the AI stated. “Compensation happening. Trying to get…”

  “Jellie ship?” Jerome looked to Monika who was pulling herself up off the floor. His eyes implored her to be unhurt. She gestured in response, showing she was not seriously injured.

  “Check the boys!” He asked. “Please?”

  Monika nodded and stumbled away, rubbing her side and neck.

  Jerome returned his attention to the displays and screens. “Jellie ship? What hit us? Sandie? Eris?”

  “The Jellie ship appeared and is firing at us!” Eris stated. “Check sector 80-18. Return fire!”

  Jerome shifted a display perspective. He saw that where moments before there had been empty space, now the Jellie ship was sitting there. Its misshapen oval appearance was not uniform in its glowing. One side of it was a deep purple, almost like a bruise on a human’s face. The other parts of the Jellie ship still radiated the eye-irritation purplish-blue luminosity. The pink destruction beam lanced out again.

  Jarring movements shook the Conestoga, and strange grinding noises echoed around. Jerome spun as many of the Willie Cannons as he could toward the Jellie ship. Only a few had a clear shot, but he fired everyone which had any chance of getting close to that enemy craft. White streamers streaked toward the Jellie ship, and several impacted it, with obvious repercussions as the Jellie craft was visible jarred.

  “Eris! Shift us around so I can fire more cannons.” Jerome called out.

  “Main drive is gone! I am trying to keep the needle ship between Alpha and the Jellies. Do whatever you can, but I have little to maneuver with, sorry.” Eris’ face was stressed and she turned away and issued some commands which Jerome did not hear completely.

  “I am trying to help,” Sandie’s voice came into Jerome’s ear.

  Monika’s hand grabbed Jerome’s shoulder. “The boys are safe, but their eyes are wide in wonder or fright. Not crying, surprisingly.” She slipped into the command seat next to Jerome.

  The displays were reoriented. A pink beam once more emanated from the end of the Jellie ship.

  “Oh no, not again you will not!” Jerome snarled and concentrated the cannon blasts on that section of the Jellie ship. While chunks of purple were ripped from the alien craft, the pink beam still volleyed across and smacked into the needle ship, smashing into the stern.

  Grinding and pounding were felt and heard as the pink beam devastated more of the needle ship.

  “Why is it attacking the main drive?” Monika asked. “If they ruptured Alpha nearly everyone would die.”

  “They must not know about the configuration of the Conestoga.” Jerome kept the barrage of cannon fired going against the Jellie ship, but as the Conestoga rolled and coasted, the specific cannons which could be engaged were changing. “Their ignorance is our blessing!”

  Sandie interjected. “They are not ignorant of a colony ship. I conjecture a high probability that the Jellies are deliberately sparing Alpha because they want it intact. They want the habitat.”

  “What?” Monika asked.

  Sandie replied, “The records the Zalians provided showed that the Jellies first disabled the main drive on the ship they called ‘Long Distance Racer’ and did not puncture the biomes. I am assuming that was the Colony Ship Marathon, and the Jellies are apparently using that same tactic here.”

  “Did the Jellies encounter teleportation bombs before?” Jerome asked as he launched that one and only operational teleportation bomb.

  “Unknown,” Sandie replied. “The records show a decades long war for the Marathon.”

  The teleportation bomb’s sending pad flew out and headed toward the Jellie ship.

  “I am launching the probes as fast as I can. They might distract whatever brains or minds the Jellies have,” Monika said and activated the launch of the probes. A probe blasted its way out of the exterior repair station, locked its wings into place, and flew toward the Jellie ship at full acceleration.

  “Yes, across the gulf of space, their minds consider ours as mere beasts that perish. Yes, good idea. Yes, distract those vast intellects which are cool and unsympathetic,” Jerome muttered as he adjusted some of the controls and kept up the stream of cannon fire at the Jellie ship. “I am firing the other Vindicator Missiles!”

  “Jerome, they do not have warheads,” Monika stated as she watched and waited for the next probe to be loaded and ready.

  “You know that. I know that. But do the Jellies know that?” Jerome’s lips turned up in a wickedly amused grin. “We just obliterated their satellites, will they risk their ship? We have been taken out of our depths, so now we put on a charming bluff.”

  The small teleportation sending pad moved steadily toward the Jellie ship, while its partnered receiving pad was moving away and on the opposite side of the Conestoga. The Jellie pink beam continued to shred parts of the needle ship. Some of the cannons were failing, many of the sensors and cameras were dead.

  But the Conestoga fought back. From Alpha cannons continued to fire into the Jellie ship as they could.

  Chunks tore out from the end of the Jellie ship as several high-speed projectiles from the Willie Cannons smacked into its side. The purple color flared, and blinked erratically, but the ship moved on. The dark purple area of the Jellie ship, what Jerome’s mind told him was a bruise, kept growing darker and darker.

  They kept firing the Willie Cannons, and watched the progress of the other weapons.

  “Come on! Vindicator Missiles get going! Launch already! Launch!” Jerome pounded the arm of his chair, narrowly missing some control levers.

  Two hanger bays did emergency depressurizations and their Vindicator Missiles, one with a side section still missing, and neither having a warhead, began their launch sequences. The rocket boosters around their sterns began emitting gases and vapors. The huge exterior hanger bay doors retracted back, while atmosphere vented into the vacuum of space.

  “Go! Go! Go!” Jerome yelled as he leaned forward and peered at the displays.

  A brilliant flash erupted on several of the displays. Jerome raised his hand to cover his eyes. The room was filled with purplish blue light.

  “They blasted the probe!” Monika’s startled voice cut in. “That pink beam of theirs obliterated it. They took the beam off the needle ship.”

  “Teleportation bomb still on the way,” Jerome replied as he looked down at that specific screen. After-images floated in his eyes from the brilliance of the blast. “It will be too small to see. They cannot see that. They must not. Oh, let it look like debris, please!”

  The Vindicator Missile with the section on its side still open blasted into space. The hanger bay doors began to close behind it. The booster rockets burned intensely as that miss
ile zipped off. Seconds later, its primary rocket fired and it raced around and out from behind the Conestoga on its course to the Jellie ship.

  “Next probe launched! Can they watch more than one thing coming in?” Monika said. “Only a few left, then we are out.”

  That probe was ejected from the exterior repair station, locked its wings into place and flew off. It was approaching the Jellie ship from a different vantage point. It was smaller and slower than the Vindicator Missiles which were in flight. Monika knew that neither the probe she had just launched or the Vindicator Missiles had any warheads or explosives. Her heart pounded as she thought of her children just a few meters away. She watched the screens and displays which showed the dance of death happening between the Jellie ship and the Conestoga’s weapons systems. One display screen showed the ruined mess which was the needle ship, and she tried not to think about all that destruction.

  “The other Vindicator Missile is also in flight,” Jerome pronounced.

  The Jellie ship spun around, or appeared to, and the pink destruction beam shot into the unarmed, and not quite completely finished Vindicator Missile which was closest to it. The beam split the missile length-wise for just a moment. Then that missile exploded in a starburst of blues and purples.

  The Jellie ship jerkily shifted about as some more of the cannon fire impacted into its side. The damage done by the cannons was less than it had been shortly before. Apparently, the Jellie ship had modified its defenses and now absorbed or deflected the impacts, with no purple debris knocked out.

  “They are compensating,” Jerome said with disgust. “Eris, can you bring us about?”

  “Not now. Busy.” Eris’ face briefly showed on the screen and then was gone.

  The next Vindicator Missile was rapidly approaching the Jellie ship, coming up from the opposite side and from a greater distance away. The Jellie craft altered course slightly, placing the dark purple area away from the approaching missile. The pink beam lanced out and chopped off the front third of the Vindicator Missile. The nose tumbled away into space in an erratic flight. The rocket continued to burn, but as the missile had been struck by the pink beam, and severed into two parts, that rocket system was cut off from the guidance and control system. The Jellie weapon had basically severed the brain out of the missile. Its burning flames erupted and the broken missile flopped about and then crashed into a section of the needle ship. Explosions, and wreckage from the missile and from structures on the hull scattered about in a million tiny pieces. Two more display screen went dark, some additional cannons shut down.

  Jerome and Monika watched intently as the Jellie ship spun a bit again, and the pink beam reached out and destroyed the probe which was much slower than the missiles, but was nearly at the Jellie ship. The probe exploded in a puff of brilliant white.

  “Contact. The sending pad is on the Jellie!” Jerome called out. “Teleportation bomb activated.”

  On the dark purple side of the Jellie ship, the small teleportation sending pad had attached itself and then started its process. Since it was already synchronized with the receiving pad, and since precision in the reconstitution at that receiving pad was not desired, the orifice opened quickly. The jumbo fusion box vibrated with power, and four bright balls of energy popped into existence, each hovering over one side of the square sending pad. They expanded and met at the top of a pyramid shape and a raw orifice came into existence. A meter-wide section of the Jellie ship’s hull disappeared down that tunnel in the sky and reappeared at the receiving pad many kilometers away. It rematerialized, but was not exactly the same as when it had been teleported away. The reconstitution elements of the teleportation bomb were not refined to any significant degree. It was never meant to be a safe teleportation, but instead was a weapon of destruction.

  A gaping and raw hole was in the side of the Jellie ship.

  Protrusions from of Jellie ship’s hull pushed toward the gaping opening, but were unable to arrest the torrent of fluids which burst, gushed, and surged out from the interior of the Jellie ship. The hard, outer hull was no longer keeping the soft, liquid environment inside. The liquids emerged as a heavy flow, but then broke into countless tiny, foamy, frothy, globs. Those globs spewed in all directions and contained a mess of shattered mechanical parts, as well as crushed organic pieces which had once been living creatures. The torrent coursed outward, while the other sides of the Jellie spaceship collapsed inward, thus making concavities all across the ship. Bluish purple lights flickered and blinked in an uncoordinated pattern.

  In a strange, and disquieting manner, the Jellie ship slowly pulled in upon itself even more. The concavities grew deeper and wider. The rush of fluids from the hull breach continued, as if everything inside was being sucked out into space, which it was. The sidewalls smashed against each other, beginning at the furthest point from the place where the teleportation bomb had gone off. Then those sides, squished together, began to also be drawn toward that hole. The Jellie spaceship was turning itself inside out.

  Monika thought back to when she was a teenager, younger than Eris, and how she and some friends had thrown an overripe pumpkin off a roof. That pumpkin had cracked open, and the orange innards had splashed out. Somehow, the Jellie ship reminded her of that. Whatever had been inside of the Jellie ship was being dispersed all over into space around the collapsing ship. The interior was coming out through the hole in its hull. The purple glow stopped as the ship was wrung apart, inverted, and twisted about. A few spurts of light, vivid blue color, blinked, but then those too died out.

  Three purple spheres, wobbly in their flight, moved away from the wreckage of the Jellie craft.

  “What are those?” Monika pointed at the display. “They are symmetric and look under control.”

  “Escape pods, maybe? Lifeboats? But no way are they boarding my ship!” Jerome said and concentrated the cannon fire on those Jellie pods.

  They were shredded apart in a crisscross of projectiles. The debris from those pods was added to the ejaculated mess from the ship. It was all a huge field of purple globs and chunks, none of which had a discernable form any longer.

  “Captain Eris?” Monika asked. “The Jellie ship is gone!”

  Eris’ face showed up on a display screen. Dark smudges were across one side and her hair was frazzled. From her countenance, and the tears running down her face, Jerome and Monika knew something terrible had happened.

  12 TO perceive the advantage of defeating the enemy, there must also be rewards.

  While the battle was surging on the outside of the Conestoga, Vesna was confirming her beloved was in good care. “You will tell me when Khin awakens, correct?” Vesna asked through the communication gear in the unfamiliar spacesuit she was wearing.

  “That is correct,” SB Cotard responded. “The staff at the Aston hospital have gone into crisis mode, but we will pay close attention to our existing patients, even as mass causalities come in from the needle ship.”

  “You have better keep Khin safe, or I will find you,” Vesna said. “He told me how you tried to kill him before.” A few strands of her red hair slipped out from around her ears and flipped across her face. She wanted to push it back, but the spacesuit’s gloves would not reach through the bubble helmet.

  “I understand your legitimate concern, but I will give him the best care possible. We are incorporating the Dome 17 medical kit technology and that has improved our care delivery,” SB Cotard responded. “Have you located other survivors?”

  “Do not change the subject! You will make sure Khin is well. Do you understand me? He has been through too much, and you owe it to him.” Vesna nearly spit out the words. Her hair again flopped across her forehead and into her eyes. It was frustrating, but one of the many frustrations which had been happening too frequently recently.

  “Yes, Vesna, I understand. I promise and make a covenant with you that I will tend to him in all my professional capacities. How are you feeling?”

  Her arm hurt a bit as
she moved, but the spacesuit was serving as an effective brace to keep her bones in alignment while they knit back together. The suit took the pressure off, and she could functional relatively normally. The medical automacube, doctor some number, which she could not recall, had said that under the conditions of the emergency, she could be part of the rescue team. SB Cotard had been tending to those people who had been more seriously injured in the Jellie’s attack.

  “I am fine, and I did find more survivors. I left them as they were loading into the transport vehicle to go to Alpha. Where I am now, here, in this place, I am surrounded by vacant corridors, with limited, or no air in them. Gravity is messed up here too. But, you just take care of my Khin!”