The Colony Ship Warren #1-7, page 1
part #0 of Colony Ship Warren #1-7 Series
The Colony Ship Warren
An omnibus of all the books in the series
By John Thornton
Table of Contents
The Colony Ship Warren
Journey for the Warren
Lost on the Warren
Nightmare on the Warren
Eerie on the Warren
Horror on the Warren
Predators on the Warren
Fear on the Warren
Click here for additional artwork
Journey for the Warren
Colony Ship Warren Book 1
John Thornton
Copyright © 2020 Automacube Enterprises
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 9781658125475
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to my wonderful wife who has been on a strange and glorious journey with me for a long time. Thanks for being the best friend anyone could have and my partner in raising our children. You even let me share my far-fetched stories and dreams with you.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Cover art by Dede Fox
1. Launch Day
“Oh, a new day dawns. Good morning to the twenty-eighth day of November in 2070!” a middle-aged man’s voice said heartily.
“Still using that old dating system?” a young, vibrant voice interjected.
Their words echoed around the engineering shuttle as its flightpath intersected the sunshine coming out from around the planet Earth. The light was wonderfully bright and the shuttle’s windows automatically filtered it, so that it was not blinding for the two-person crew. It was a busy day and they had a lot to do.
“Oh, yes, I was born under that calendar system, and it still means a lot to me. Yes, there is nothing quite like a sunrise from space. I have seen so many of those, but I never get tired of it. No, I just never get tired of it at all,” the pilot of the engineering shuttle went on, his rich baritone voice carried much emotion. His words flowed out as a near-steady stream. “And this is another launch day, so it is especially beautiful. And look, you can still see some of the greens and blues of Earth down below us. Back in my early days, when I was your age, most of the planet looked like that. In fact, all of it looked like that, well, except for the poles which were the most brilliant white you could ever imagine. I know you think you have seen white, but I am telling you, the white you have seen is not really white at all, not compared to what the poles were like before everything went to hell after the wars and—”
“How many years have you been doing this, Gabby?” the copilot asked, his youthful voice a stark contrast to that of the older pilot. He barely got the words in before Gabby was continuing with his commentary.
“—after the wars and everything. How long, Angus? How long, you ask? I have been with the project since the beginning, back in forty-two when I was just a pup of twenty-two years old. That was back when permalloy was still pretty new. Hardest stuff humans have ever made, and back then, well, let me just tell you, making stuff from permalloy back then was not as easy as it is today.”
“Was that so far back language used contractions?” Angus tried to tease Gabby, but was ignored.
Gabby went on, tapping the window in front of him, “Today, we can make that stuff just as hard in opaque or in clear form. Transparent permalloy, wow! Yes, transparent permalloy, it changed everything, yes it did. Permalloy itself changed a bunch of stuff, along with gravity manipulation and the Mayberry Mover. But way back then, I was wet behind the ears and green as a natural cornfield in summer. You ever see a real cornfield? I bet not, but I got on one of the first crews with Asteroid Prospectors. Yes, I did. Worked by butt off to get that; good grades, recommendations, schmoozing with the right people, and did summer internships without pay. I actually met Kevin Mayberry once. Great guy. Died way too young. A boy-genius he was, that is for sure. Younger than I was and I was a rarity in those days, let me tell you. Most guys and gals on Asteroid Prospectors were in their thirties or forties. Had to be to get the training and flight-time they required. They came up from the big, old nation states and their space programs. Of course, that was before humanity kicked its own bucket and nearly killed itself off. Now, at least we are trying to work together as one people. Anyway, being I was a pup, I was the exception that proved the rule. Then, I moved to be part of Rebane Space Construction in fifty-eight. Been doing this ever since. Had a bad year, I tell you, yes, we all had a bad year. That was that year after Kevin Mayberry died and that new owner and court case—with the seldom-right Reverend Rhono—who got control of Asteroid Prospectors. Buffoon! Ha! But that Kevin Mayberry, now he was something. He was a straight-shooter and a real brilliant man. Nice as all get out, too. Hey, Angus, correct your magnetics! Number seven is off by point four. We, in this tug, have got a job to do out here. Today is a big day!”
“I am on it, Gabby,” Angus adjusted some of his controls and his instruments confirmed the correction. He was again amazed that the old man could talk and monitor all the equipment which they were using. Gabby was skilled. “Corrections applied.”
“That has it better. Good boy. This is our final sweep, but we do not want to miss anything. We are running the last cleaning of the channel for that CS-3. She will launch in a few hours and no one wants any debris in the way when that great ship starts up her ram scoop and sucks in her first fuel.”
“The particle accelerator will feed the Colony Ship Warren for the initial phase, right?” Angus asked as he made another adjustment to the controls in front of him. “The scoop can process most anything the filters let in, and the filters are running already. Correct?”
“That is correct, yes, it is. CS-3, the Warren, will get underway along the channel we are checking. It would take something really enormous—or something bizarre—to choke the feed, but our job is to just make sure nothing enormous or bizarre is out here to get gobbled down. The particle accelerator imitates what the ship would be like if she was already moving. It will shoot a steady stream of material into the scoop. After that initial startup and when the Warren gets up a head of steam, she will feed herself, and veer away from the particle accelerator,” Gabby went on. “Yes, she will just suck in the atoms which are out here and spit them out her tail. A nice, efficient system, after she gets running. The particle accelerator starts the snowball rolling, then they spread out their virtual scoop and viola, she will be heading for interstellar space and a couple centuries later she will be at a new world! Amazing. Something we built going all that way. I was telling you about the time when I met Kevin Mayberry. It was about two years before the Great Event. You are what, twenty years old now?”
“Soon to be twenty-one on my birthday which is—” Angus tried to get a comment in but was interrupted.
“Just a pup. But you are not as green or inexperienced as I was at your age. No one is innocent anymore. Well, not naïvely innocent. The world changed, yes, it did, that is for sure. Back in those early years, they did not even have the reproduction and fabrication facilities built. We had to haul stuff up from the ground. Wow, that was when these tugs showed how great a workhorse they could be. Yes, up and down, up and down, over and over. Well, that was back when I was young. Yes, Angus, I was working before you were even a twinkle in your daddy’s eye or an invitation to him from your momma. I met Kevin Mayberry, the founder of Asteroid Prospectors—and a good friend of Nigel Rebane our boss. Kevin Mayberry was also friends with that dome flake Dillion Vermeer, you know her? The one whose company is building ‘ten thousand domes to save humanity’!”
“That is their motto. I applied for spots in those domes,” Angus interjected. “I am hoping that…”
“Everyone has applied, right?” Gabby answered and cut off the younger man’s words. “I applied too. I hear they are way behind in their building schedule, but I guess I wish them well. I applied, but I know I am too old, and that is okay. I am doing my part here. For you know, those ground pounders, well, they may be building a hundred, or a thousand, or ten thousand domes, and good for them, but up here, we only have to get seven projects done. And we have an army of automacubes to float from project to project. Two ships are already on the way! CS-1 and CS-2. Yes, things I built are on their way to the stars!”
“Colony Ship Vanguard and Colony Ship Marathon,” Angus affirmed. “I saw the launches from…”
Gabby interrupted, “They are something to see. Today we see the next one, yes, CS-3 launches today. But that Kevin Mayberry, well, yes, he was a genuinely nice fellow. He ran Asteroid Prospectors in the right way. Yes, he did. I met him when I was assigned…”
Angus stopped trying to make it a dialogue and just listened as Gabby rambled on. Some of Gabby phrases rang odd on his ears, but the old man liked to chatter and he was exceptionally good at his job. If half of what he said was accurate—and Angus had no reason to doubt any of it—then Gabby had certainly led a stupendously varied life. Angus watched the screens and reviewed the status of the engineering shuttle. Some people called them engineering tugs, but they were shuttles.
Unlike the majority of the shuttles Angus had seen, which were manufactured, tested, and then got stored into the colony ships, the engineering shuttles were actually working on the project. There were a few other shuttles about, runabouts and others transporting people back and forth, but the automacubes and the engineering shuttles did the majority of the construction.
Each of the colony ships carried a large complement of a variety of shuttles, as well as a myriad of biological things. Angus shook his head a bit as he looked down at Earth where some of the tan bands of toxic radiation were visible as the sunlight reflected off of them. They wrapped around the Earth like the hands of a strangler throttling off a victim.
Angus shrugged that image away as he pondered the enormity of the project.
Gabby continued to chatter away, “…the first reproduction and fabrication facilities. Once those were built for each of the ships, they worked and produced their own automacubes. Some of the guys and gals were assigned to haul in asteroids for raw materials, but again, a lot had to be rescued up from places on Earth. I tell you, some of those missions got pretty hairy, or hair-raising since I do not have much hair anymore, but on those missions with transplanting the biologicals, there were some hairy, scaly, leafy, and moldy moments, I tell you. It was harried as well! Yes, it was. Rush here. Rush there. Oh, dear, yes. Racing against radiation and we still had to do cleanups all over the place. Of course, the exteriors of habitats—the shells—had to be pretty much completed by then, they were, and we did that back, years ago. Each ship’s time schedule was different. I remember that mission—for CS-2—where we took a section of the Amazon basin which was…”
Angus continued to listen only half-heartedly. The engineering shuttle was performing flawlessly. The channel they were inspecting and refining was marked on his screens and all was reading nearly perfect.
Yes, Angus liked the engineering shuttles. They were reliable, rugged, and utilitarian. They had basically two rectangular cuboids—each about five meters tall and thirty meters long—for the main fuselage.
At the front of those cuboids were clear permalloy half-bubbles. Angus was seated in one and Gabby was in the other. These separate piloting positions offered impressive views as the seats sat well into the clear permalloy half-bubble. The seats were gimballed and able to pivot and shift position to allow the pilot to operate everything with ease. Instruments were located on the arms of the chair, and on a small upright control shaft which rose between the pilot’s legs. Angus’ feet were locked onto controls levers and pedals which he adjusted with almost as much finesse as he would if he were using fingertip controls. On the inside of the clear permalloy half-bubble were semi-transparent projected screens, monitors, and readouts giving him all the information he would ever need. One display also showed him Gabby’s physical status, which he checked occasionally since Gabby was an old man. Angus had wondered what might happen if Gabby had some kind of medical health emergency, but the hospital in orbit was not far and medical emergencies happened only rarely.
The empennage of the shuttle, being at the opposite end from where Angus sat, had multiple operating rigs but most were folded into storage and not being used for that final mission. There was an operator’s bubble back there as well, which a third crewman could use, but this mission was just the two of them. Sitting atop the main body of the engineering shuttle were four smaller cuboids, three meters tall and about half the length of the ship. They housed various equipment which was also mostly stored for the next missions.
“… yes, I tell you, Kevin Mayberry was a genius, a genuine genius and without his Mayberry Mover propulsion systems the Earth would never have a chance. He died way too young. Most everybody dies way too young now. I say, yes, I say, we all die way too young now. When I was a kid, before the Great Event and the 90-Hour War, people lived to be a hundred, some ever older. But now, look at me. I am fifty and I am one of the crotchety curmudgeons of the space builders.” Gabby stated and he too glanced over at the Earth with its swirling tan bands of death.
A beeping noise alerted Angus and Gabby that they had a message.
“This is Monitor of the Warren,” the mechanical voice announced. “This is a test of the all-channel system. The Colony Ship Warren is in launch countdown mode. Each of your positions is being plotted and all is proceeding on schedule.”
Gabby unnecessarily explained, “We will get those more and more frequently as the actual launch time grows near. I think the human captain should be doing that, but maybe the high-and-mighty do not want to send messages out to the likes of mere construction workers, right?”
“I am not sure I agree with—”
“Well, we get messages from Monitor, and well, that is fine. Monitor is the main artificial intelligence system in their lattice of compeers. You know, way back when I started with Asteroid Prospectors, and even when I was first on with Rebane, they still used the term computers sometimes. Can you believe that? Yes, they did. Like it was the twentieth century or something. My parents told me about some tribal rivalry between Macs and PCs, and how they had to access the internet!”
“Wow, you are really old,” Angus interjected with a laugh in his voice. He could not resist trying to at least contribute something to make his side of a dialogue.
“Yes, sir, I am old. You are young, but we have spanned a critical time in human history. I was lucky to survive the Great Event and the wars, but I did. Maybe, humanity needed that kick in the butt to finally come together to do what is right? But now look, we are sending stuff off lightyears away. Stuff we built together, you and me. Yes, my friend, Monitor is a sweet AI and has been a friend to us all on this project. Compeers! Yes, we are all compeers now. People of the same rank or status, being equals, companions, coworkers, and comrades!”
“Unless you are a high-and-might captain!” Angus struck with mocking humor again. “Or a seldom-right reverend?”
“I suppose I deserve that. But all those AIs working in unison make these colony ships possible. A lattice of artificial intelligences. A lattice of compeers. Glad they did not go back to some ancient term like computers. A computer network running a generational colony ship? Oh, brother. That would be like calling our tug here and biplane. I guess, words and phrases change. I still remember hearing people using contractions back when I was your age. Well, some people did anyway. I suppose the old term computer is getting long in the tooth. Computers—and what they evolved into—have been around for a century now, and artificial intelligences for most of my fifty years of life, even back to before the Great Event. But I tell you, I am glad about that Precision Language Movement. I understand the fallacy of language contractions, I sure do, for things can get out of hand too. Squishing words all together and garbling speech. I think that contributed to the 90-Hour War, yes, I surely do. Standard language is essential to our building the colony ships. As essential as Monitor and the lattice of compeers. If we could not communicate, what would we get done?”
“And essential for the domes! Dome Survival Systems has some great scientists—” Angus interjected as Gabby took a breath before he continued with his semi-haranguing soliloquy.
“Domes? Oh my. More like doom and no survival there. I can tell you. I would never lock myself into one of these tin cans. That would be like stepping into an old bank vault and sealing the door. You know about bank vaults? Or banks? Nope, no domes for me. No thank you. Remember the pandemics, way back in forty-six to forty-right or whatever it was when that Chimera Plague ran rampant. People made asses and monkeys out of themselves, I tell you. Those egg-headed scientists mixed human and animal genes and got monsters. Monsters. You want to be locked in some dome with monsters? Diseases? No place to escape?”
Angus was shocked when Gabby actually seemed to expect an answer as he had halted his speech.
“That was before I was born. Way before Dome Survival Systems… some of the domes have been running now for ten years… I know they are behind schedule, but back to that plague. I think the plan with those scientists… was to make people radiation resistant—from birth—for better survival chances,” Angus muttered back. His mind was whirling with crashing hopes and dashed dreams. “Sure, it was a horrific tragedy, ugly illnesses and deaths, but their goals were noble, right? How different is locking oneself into a survival dome as compared to getting into a colony ship?”
“Angus my young friend,” Gabby replied with a different tone in his voice. It was much more serious and at a slower rate. “That is an excellent question. For me, the difference is these great colony ships are escaping from the tan death.” Gabby pointed to the Earth. “You put yourself in a dome and you cannot ever run away. No fleeing at all. The ships can fly to a safe place, and well, when I get back down planet-side, I will be joining one of those traveling caravans. They just move from one safe place to another keeping away from the radiation bands and wait it out until Old Mother Earth repairs herself. Fusion power is the future and those caravans will be having plenty of power to outrun the toxins…” Gabby’s words trailed off.
