by Isaac Hooke
“Now we wait,” Hoodwink said. He glanced at the countdown indicated on his helmet aReal. Three minutes to go.
“I wonder what my sister is doing right now,” Zak said into the silence that followed.
“She’s probably enjoying her life on the Inside,” Hoodwink said. “Eating ice cream.”
Zak laughed nervously. “She’s not the ice-cream eating type. But I hear you. Compared to what we’re doing...”
Hoodwink fidgeted. He stared at that countdown, willing it to go faster, wishing he hadn’t set so much time.
“She’s a good girl,” Zak continued. “Wouldn’t harm a fly. My death probably tore her up, though. She’s got no one now.”
“She’ll manage,” Hoodwink said. “She’ll have to.” He thought of all the people close to him who had ever died. Cora. Fhavolin. Sarella. It hurt him greatly, the knowledge that most of them had died by his own hand, or because of something he had done.
Ah Sarella, forgive me.
He’d disposed of her body on Ganymede shortly after arriving; he lay her to rest beside the corpse of his previous surrogate. That their mummified remains should lie there together for most of eternity seemed somehow fitting.
“You know,” Zak said. “It’s funny. Growing up on the streets like I did, in a world where space travel was something people only did in books, where finding the next meal was the greatest and only goal in life, I never thought, not in my wildest dreams, that I’d ever find myself on a space craft in orbit above Ganymede, waiting for a nuclear bomb to go off so I could blow a hole in an alien ship and then board it afterward.”
“You and me both, lad,” Hoodwink said. “It’s a long way from the streets of Severest to the moons of Jupiter.”
Hoodwink watched in trepidation as the remaining seconds ticked down.
“What if it doesn’t work?” Zak said.
“It’ll work,” Hoodwink said. “The engineers refurbished both warheads with the help of the training AIs. They replaced the metal parts and joints, and 3D-printed completely new carrier vehicles. They assured me that every part passed the recommended spec.”
“Oh, I’m sure the bomb will go off,” Zak said. “But I mean, what if it doesn’t create the crater we need?”
“The Satori aren’t invincible,” Hoodwink said. “Trust me. Their technology can only take them so far. Without the nano robot shield they are no more than sardines in a very large tin can. And we’re about to peel that can open.”
The timer on his aReal reached zero.
Hoodwink waited for the expected crater to appear.
The moments past. Still nothing.
“What happened?” Zak said. “Shouldn’t we have seen something by now? A flash? Debris?”
“It would seem our nuke didn’t detonate,” Hoodwink said.
So much for the engineers’ assurances.
52
Blaster in hand, Tanner made his way through the pod-lined passages with two more security men he had retrieved from the berthing area. The few robots he passed ignored his party, thanks to the rollback in their programming he’d performed. Still, he didn’t feel all that safe passing those emotionless bastions of steel, and he was glad for the weapon.
He’d dispatched another security team along with some relearning specialists down to cargo bay seven, where the robots had gathered most of the newly awakened. When that team had reported in, they informed him that the bay housed three hundred people in total. At least two hundred and fifty of those people would have to be returned to the pod world if the food sources were to last.
Tanner was still waiting to receive Jeremy’s location. It had been several minutes since Stanson had informed him that their old enemy was somewhere aboard, and Tanner hadn’t yet heard anything else. He had been checking random compartments since then, but hadn’t discovered anyone. He was growing frustrated, because he wanted to get back Inside and rejoin Ari. Time passed faster on the Inside, so the battle was probably over by then. Even so, his place was with her. He intended to capture Jeremy and return to her as soon as possible.
“Stanson,” Tanner said into the comm via his aReal. “Have you completed your scan of all organic life aboard?”
“Just did,” Stanson returned. “I was about to contact you.”
“So what did you find? Where’s Jeremy?”
“That’s the crux,” Stanson sent. “We can’t find him. He’s masking his signature somehow.”
Tanner wasn’t so sure that was the case. “Is it possible he isn’t aboard?”
“What do you mean?” came Stanson’s response.
“Maybe he found a wireless access port somewhere and then left the ship before we changed all the entry codes on the hatches,” Tanner transmitted.
“Sure, but the signal from those wireless ports wouldn’t penetrate the hull from outside the ship,” Stanson replied. “So he wouldn’t be able to connect if he was somewhere on the moon.”
“But we routinely communicate with shuttles out there,” Tanner pressed.
“We do,” Stanson returned. “But those transmissions rely upon large booster nodes in the shuttles themselves.”
Tanner considered that. “So you’re saying a wireless access port could penetrate if it was used from a shuttle?”
“Possibly,” Stanson said. “Though the bandwidth requirements are fairly high. The lag would render such a connection useless.”
“What about an alien signal?” Tanner asked. “As in: a signal from a Satori mind to its human surrogate? How easily would that penetrate the hull?”
“Probably very easily,” Stanson transmitted. “We have no idea how most of their technology works, but we can assume that it’s somewhat more advanced than our own.”
“I want you to redirect those active scanners of yours,” Tanner sent. “See if you can identify the position of any alien flyers resting on the surface nearby. If we can’t find Jeremy aboard the ship, then we’ll just have to track down his Satori body.”
“On it,” Stanson replied. “I’ll get back to you shortly. In the meantime, it’s probably a good idea for you to get suited up. Assuming you actually want to pursue this angle.”
“I do.”
KADE STUDIED THE two guards, Lana and Craig. Lana carried the blaster. She was the one to watch out for.
Kade sat on the floor. Pots resided to his left. Brown his right. Just beyond Brown perched Sammuel, and Kade’s wife from the Inside, Teanne. They all sat so close together that their shoulders were touching. None of them were bound, not any more, though they kept up the pretense, holding their wrists behind their backs for the sake of the guards.
After Pots was originally tied up, he managed to secretly grab a pocketknife he’d left on a nearby shelf while Tanner awakened Brown, Kade and the others. After Tanner left, Pots cut through his flexicuffs and surreptitiously passed the knife down the line. Each of them had sawed at their bindings until they were all free.
Good old Pots. Kade would have to see that he was rewarded once the ship was theirs again.
“Ready?” Kade said, underbreath.
“Ready,” Brown returned.
Craig stood up angrily. “I said no talking!”
“Sorry,” Kade said. “I really have to use the head.”
“Hold it,” Lana ordered him.
“What harm can I do?” Kade said. “We’re all bound and gagged.” He shook his leg, as if struggling against the urge to relieve himself. “I’ll piss on the floor if you don’t let me go.”
Lana exchanged a glance with Craig. “Should we let him piss on the floor?”
Craig wrinkled his nose. “I don’t want to smell it for the next three hours.”
When the guards still hesitated, Kade added: “There’s a protocol for the ethical treatment of prisoners, you know. Ari won’t be pleased when she finds out you wouldn’t let us use the head. We’re not animals.”
Lana sighed, then told Kade. “Move forward. Away from the others.”
; Kade wormed his body toward the guards.
Unfortunately Craig, the unarmed one, advanced to meet him. Too bad.
“Stand up,” Craig said.
“I can’t stand on my own,” Kade told him.
Craig knelt to grab his upper arm. He must have seen that Kade was no longer bound, because he said: “What the—”
Kade leaped to his feet, smashing Craig in the nose with the hilt of the knife. He slid the blade under his chin and spun toward Lana, who was pointing the blaster directly at him.
“Drop the blaster and kick it to us,” Kade instructed her.
“Don’t listen to him!” Craig struggled in his arms.
Kade pressed the tip of the blade to his flesh and Craig stopped struggling.
Lana raised her hands in surrender and lowered the blaster to the deck. She kicked it toward the group.
Teanne immediately scooped it up.
“Give me the blaster,” Kade instructed Teanne.
His wife scowled at him, as if considering shooting him down right there. “No. It is mine.” She pointed the weapon at Lana.
Kade wasn’t entirely sure how much he trusted his wife to carry the weapon, though she had certainly proven herself in the recent battle. Her Wraylor avatar had been a killing machine out there. Still, he hadn’t really forgiven her for warning Ari of his attack on Crane. He supposed he couldn’t blame Teanne: the place was her birth city, even if it wasn’t real.
Kade shoved Craig toward Lana.
“Bind them,” he told Pots.
While Teanne kept the blaster pointed at the pair, Pots proceeded to retrieve the flexicuffs from the belts of the guards and bound their wrists behind their backs in turn. He forced them to sit in a corner of the room. Craig and Lana scowled at them the whole time.
“We have to move,” Brown said. “This location is compromised.”
“Obviously,” Pots told him.
Kade heard a beeping then.
“What is that?” Pots said.
The beeping increased in frequency. Kade realized it was coming from the blaster Teanne held.
He stepped toward his wife urgently.
“Drop—” Kade began.
The blaster detonated. Kade was launched backward by the shockwave. He smashed into the bulkhead and slid to the floor.
He blinked his eyes several times. His hearing was gone, at least for the moment. He crawled to what remained of his wife. Pots was already there, holding her. He was saying something, but Kade couldn’t hear.
A large hole had been torn into her side. Her face was covered in blood. She wasn’t breathing. She had no pulse.
Pots handed her to him, and Kade held Teanne in his arms.
“My wife,” he said, though he couldn’t hear the words. “My wife.”
Why did Teanne have to be the one to scoop up the blaster? She should have listened to him when he asked her to hand it over.
She despised him for letting her out of her pod and into the real world. For revealing the truth. He had broken the rules, risked everything to set her free, but none of that mattered. She resented him for it, mostly because he had failed to revive their sons. Both had proven to be extremely old and frail in the real world; the first died the instant he slid from his pod, the second shortly thereafter. He remembered Teanne’s accusing words as clearly as if she had spoken them yesterday: You should have left them alone. You should have left me alone. Yes, she despised him.
But how she felt about him didn’t matter, because in the end he loved her. They had seen so much together. Experienced so many different worlds.
And now she is dead.
Kade lowered her body and in a fit of rage took the knife to the guards. He could hardly see for all the tears. When their pitiful lives finally ended, he turned his attention to the terminals.
Ari was responsible for the loss of his wife, however indirectly. He prayed that his minions hadn’t eliminated her, not yet.
She needed to properly suffer.
What is the worst possible death I can give her?
He thought immediately of Brute and he grinned for the first time through the tears.
53
On her knees, Ari watched hypnotically as Gemma raised her katana out to the side to perform the finishing blow. The woman obviously meant to take her head.
Ari could only watch, too stunned, and in too much pain, to do anything else.
The sword sliced through the air.
“No!” someone shouted. A woman’s voice.
Another blade intercepted the katana.
Renna. The Keeper drove the Dragon Lady backward under the strength of her blows.
“Men, attack!” Briar shouted.
Defenders rushed into the corridor that the enemy ranks had formed for Jeremy and Brute. The sally would buy Ari some time, but Briar had doomed most of those men to their deaths for it, she knew.
Briar knelt beside her. “Can you walk?”
“I think so,” Ari said. Somehow she was able to find the mental fortitude to staunch the wound to her gol body, and banish the pain. She would have to continually focus on that wound beneath her diaphragm if she wanted to live.
Briar hauled her to her feet. “We’re going to bring you somewhere safe. Somewhere we can apply a healing shard. We’re going to make you good as new, my niece.”
Briar led her away. More defenders rushed into the fray to cover their retreat. Bodies were sent flying left and right by Brute. She thought she heard Jeremy calling her name through the clamor of battle, but she ignored his taunts.
Briar picked out certain people as he went, calling them to his side to act as their honor guard. They left the square to shelter in a house on a side street. Men went upstairs to secure the second floor, while others guarded the front and back doors.
Briar helped Ari remove her breastplate, and then he retrieved two healing shards and applied the creatures to the entry and exit wounds on her torso. He released lightning into the shards from the rings he wore, and the creatures became so cold that they burned.
Ari watched the one on her belly shrink into the flesh, leaving behind the pinkish skin of a newborn in place of the wound.
She felt utterly exhausted, but forced herself to rise nonetheless. “We have to get back to the square.”
Briar shook his head. “Ari. Dear niece. The battle is lost. Surely you realized that even as we forsook the field. We must retreat to the transit center and leave this city to its fate.”
“What about your men? And mine?”
Briar sighed. “They gave their lives for us.”
The guard at the front door spoke. “One of ours is running through the streets. He calls for Ari.”
“Get him,” Ari said.
The man, a member of the Black Den, glanced at Briar for confirmation, who nodded.
The guard hurried outside and returned a moment later with the courier.
“Ari!” the man said when he saw her. “Amoch has returned! And he is very angry. He has killed them all.”
“Amoch?” Ari said in alarm. That meant Tanner had failed after all.
“Yes,” the courier said. “He attacked our men, and his own men. He didn’t care: whatever moved, he killed it. Indiscriminately. It’s a massacre out there. We must flee!”
The courier abruptly floated into the air. His arms and legs squirmed. “Help me!”
He slowly turned upside-down, and then slammed into the wall so hard that cracks formed around him. He slid to the floor dead. Red blood stained the wall where he had struck.
Several others in the room also floated into the air, similarly turned upside-down, and lost their lives when their bodies smashed into the walls.
The front door exploded open.
Amoch stepped inside.
Ari tried to move but her body was frozen. Kade had apparently reverted the code change that allowed him to freeze avatars.
“Why hello, Ari,” the hooded man said. “I’ve missed you.”
&n
bsp; 54
Hoodwink instructed Zak to return the shuttle to the bomb. He ordered the others to remain behind, and they did so; however his alien flyer also followed along, keeping within five hundred meters as per the instructions he had originally programmed into the autopilot.
Debris occasionally spurted upward from that massive hull where the invisible lasers from the human vessel struck. Most of the plasma bombardments from the alien mothership had ceased for the moment—the turrets would have been the first structures the humans targeted when the shields went down.
Zak landed near the bomb without the aid of grappling hooks and activated the shuttle’s mounting magnets.
“Stay here,” Hoodwink told Zak. He unbuckled his seatbelt and floated to the airlock, opening the inner and outer hatches. He pulled himself out, venting propellant to steer himself toward the bomb.
When he reached the device he grabbed the handles and drew his body toward the control panel. The timer on the HLED was locked at 3:00.
“Looks like the countdown is stuck at the three minute mark,” Hoodwink transmitted. “I’m going to try resetting it.”
He entered ten minutes and pressed the arm button. The display began to count down once more. From three minutes, not ten.
2:59.
2:58.
“Shit.” Hoodwink tried to change the value but the panel refused to respond. He hurriedly jetted toward the shuttle.
“Zak, get ready to launch the moment I’m inside,” he transmitted. “We have three minutes!”
“You like to cut things close, don’t you Hoodwink?” Zak replied.
Hoodwink pulled himself through the first airlock and shut the hatch.
“Go go!” he sent.
Hoodwink was thrown to the deck of the shuttle as the craft ascended, then slammed into the rear bulkhead of the airlock when Zak accelerated. He wished the damn craft had better inertial compensators.
Using the enhanced strength of his exoskeleton, he managed to crawl along the deck and leave the airlock. He shut the inner hatch and then continued crawling toward his seat.