by Isaac Hooke
The compartment abruptly shook.
"What was that?" Tanner said.
"The attack alarms started shortly after Kade and his followers had gone. I assumed it was some false warning he'd planted to sow confusion, but when the compartment began to rumble, I realized it was real. With my read-only access, I was able to confirm that there was indeed an attacker in orbit. Thankfully the automated defenses had kicked-in. At least Kade hadn't disabled those."
Tanner attempted to access one of the vacated terminals beside him. "I've been locked out, too."
Stanson nodded. "We can connect to the Inside, and not much more."
Two high-pitched alarms sounded simultaneously from the far side of the room. Tanner recognized it as the heart rate alert, which activated when the heart of a tethered individual stopped. It was an alarm no one working in the Control Room ever wanted to hear. It meant that someone had died violently on the Inside, and the organic wires from the umbilical had cooked the contents of his or her skull.
Tanner rushed over and attempted to resuscitate the first operator. Stanson drunkenly ambled to his side, taking the second operator. Both of them failed to revive either individual.
"Damn it." Tanner sat back on the deck. The two would have been acting as Keepers, probably in Red Mesa. Lightning wielders had likely ambushed them on the Inside. He immediately worried for Ari's safety.
She can take care of herself, he reminded himself.
"We have to get more operators up here to replace the five we've lost," Tanner said. "Can we summon them with read-only access?"
"Probably not," Stanson said.
"Then one of us will have to visit their quarters and manually retrieve them."
"Not so easy," Stanson said. "Robots have cordoned off this compartment. We can't get out."
"What the hell is Kade doing?" Tanner said, mostly to himself.
"He obviously wants to take control of the ship," Stanson said. "And whatever he plans, it can't be good. The code he put into the system to sedate those who wake up is no longer working, and people are leaving the Inside by the dozens. According to the AI, the robots are gathering the former dreamers into a cargo bay not far from the relearning center."
Tanner frowned. The ship's resources were already stretched to the maximum. There simply wasn't enough food to meet the caloric requirements of even a few more awakened people, let alone dozens of them.
"The AI tells me that if the newly awakened try to leave the cargo bay, the robots attack and kill them," Stanson said. "Can you imagine that? People crawling on their bellies in terror, their muscles atrophied from a lifetime of dreaming, trying to escape these iron monsters? And through it all, they have no idea what's going on?"
"It can't be pleasant," Tanner agreed, remembering the horror of his own awakening. He accessed a nearby terminal.
"AI, location of Operator Kade?" he asked it.
"Unable to locate," the AI returned.
"Location of Operators Pots or Brown?"
"Unable to locate," the AI repeated.
"Damn it." He glanced at Stanson. "How is he masking his location?"
Stanson shook his head. "I have no idea, Tanner. Could be part of whatever code he injected into my terminal."
There was one last thing Tanner could try. "AI, last known location of Operator Kade?"
"Operator Kade was last observed on deck five, near compartment 5-22-4-A."
"Good thinking," Stanson said. "Though I somehow doubt he's near that area."
Tanner nodded. "Well, we can't exactly search for him at the moment, not with those robots guarding our door. Let's work on these systems. See if we can restore our access privileges. Try connecting in zero mode."
"But we disabled the zero mode connect feature on all the Control Room terminals," Stanson said.
"Let's try each terminal anyway," Tanner said. "We have to do something while we wait for Hoodwink to arrive, and I'd prefer not to just sit here. Hopefully he'll be able to clear the robots from the entrance, and then we can try the terminals somewhere else if we can't get in here."
The compartment shook from another attack.
"Wait a second," Stanson said. "Hoodwink? He's here?"
"Yes," Tanner said. "Though for how long he'll be with us this time, I have no idea."
three
Hoodwink entered his access code into the keypad. He half-expected to be locked out, but like before, the code worked and the hatch clicked open.
Blaster in hand, Hoodwink slowly peered into the hallway outside. The way seemed clear, so he stepped outside. He was wearing a pair of wireless aReal glasses, which he had purloined from the cargo bay. The "ship map" feature was working, which kept his location centered while the blueprints of the Hercules generation ship updated around him to correspond with his latest position. He had already set Tanner's location in the Control Room as his destination, and it flashed on the map ahead.
Translucent pods lined the corridor. Human bodies floated within them, blanketed in a green goo, sleepers living in the world of the Inside. One pod was an opaque black, a sign that the occupant had died.
These pods were a common enough sight on a colony ship, he supposed. Traveling to other stars took centuries, and the hibernating crew certainly couldn't be expected to undertake the entire journey while awake. Too bad this crew had spent the past two hundred years stuck in one place, though, crashed on Ganymede. If the Satori in orbit had their way, the colonists would never leave that moon. And what this so-called Amoch was doing certainly didn't help matters.
Up ahead he saw a bone-thin man, his skin a bright red, wrinkled like a raisin. It reminded him a little of the skin of a newborn. The man crawled on the deck, newly emerged, still connected by a fleshy umbilical to the pod beside him. Green slime oozed from a slit in the membrane near the bottom of the pod and seeped through the floor grill to the deck below.
"Mom," the man was saying between coughs. "Mom!"
Hoodwink knelt beside the man. "Don't be afraid. I'm going to hoist you over my shoulder and carry you. But first I have to cut your umbilical."
The man fainted.
Hoodwink realized that the man was extremely old. Likely, if Hoodwink lifted him, his bones would break. In fact, he'd probably already broken all his ribs from the effort of coughing up all that green muck in his lungs.
Hoodwink was about to drag him when he realized the man was no longer breathing. He checked his pulse. Nothing. The man had died, the rebirth too much for his atrophied, ancient body to take.
Hoodwink heard the mechanical whir of servomotors and moving treads coming from the forward direction. He glanced up. One of the ship's maintenance machines approached. The head seemed like a sword hilt, with three camera lenses for eyes located underneath a red proximity sensor. A corrugated, flexible black bag connected the steel torso to rolling treads. The telescoping arms ended in powerful steel pincers.
"I blame you for this," Hoodwink said to the approaching robot. He unleashed his blaster, tearing a new arsehole into its chest. Sparks flew and the machine ground to a halt. Through the hole, Hoodwink could see the seared ends of different colored wires and circuit boards.
Hoodwink continued his advance. Most of the time he chose to hide between the pods, or to escape to another deck via a vertical trunk when one or more robots presented themselves. If he destroyed too many it would adversely affect the ship's self-maintenance capabilities. Given the current Satori bombardment, that would not be a good thing.
The deck shook occasionally around him, reminding him of that very attack. The Satori had upgraded their weapons since the last encounter: it was doubtful the crashed human ship would be able to hold out for even a tenth as long as it had during their last encounter. Hoodwink estimated they had a day, maybe two, before the Satori destroyed all of the offensive and defensive capabilities of the Hercules ship, leaving it ripe for final destruction. Once that was done, the mothership would return to Earth, and likely attempt to reconque
r the planet. For that reason alone it was vital that the humans on Ganymede did not fall.
He reached the hallway adjacent to the Control Room. He peered around the edge and spotted five robots guarding it from the outside. He decided there was nothing for it but to exterminate them all. The ship would simply have to suffer the loss of five maintenance robots.
Hoodwink fired five shots, disabling the robots. He squeezed between them to the door and once more his code granted him entry.
Inside he found Tanner and Stanson the only ones active in a roomful of dreaming terminal operators.
"Is that him?" Stanson said.
"That's Hoodwink, yes," Tanner said.
"His face has changed."
"My face may have changed," Hoodwink said, holstering the blaster. "But I'm still the same man I was. For the most part."
Stanson came forward. "It's good to see you, Hood."
"You've forgiven me, then?" Hoodwink told the man. "Even if I'm one of the Enemy?"
"How could I not?" Stanson said. "You saved us all."
"I suppose I did, at that," Hoodwink agreed. "Mind, I had help." He glanced at Tanner.
"I didn't blow up the mothership," Tanner said.
"Any chance of that happening the same way again?" Stanson said hopefully.
"Not this time," Hoodwink said. "See, there's a small problem. I'm not actually aboard the mothership."
"Then where are you?" Stanson asked.
"I'm inside a small flyer parked a short ways outside your own ship." He glanced at the Children sleeping in front of the terminals. "Update me on the situation."
Tanner and Stanson did just that.
"So you tried to access all of the terminals in zero mode?" Hoodwink asked.
"Yes," Tanner said. "They've all been disabled. Including the two wireless access ports we have."
"So what you're saying is that we need to get to another set of terminals before we can even begin to hope to bypass the locks this Amoch, or Kade, has put on the system."
"That's right."
Hoodwink pursed his lips. "All right, Tanner, we'll make our way to the berthing area to gather up what Children we can from the other watches, and we'll try different terminal access points as we go."
"What about me?" Stanson asked.
"You stay here," Hoodwink told him. "With read-only access, you should still have the ability to review the code check-ins made in the past few months. Make a note of all the modifications Kade, Brown and Pots have made. Keep an eye out for any code that might override the wake-up subroutine. It'll be attached to an inventory-capable item, something that could be embedded in an avatar's belongings. I don't want my daughter trapped in there an eternity, I don't."
"I'll get on it," Stanson said.
Hoodwink approached the door. "Tanner, with me."
four
Amoch sat in his tent in the makeshift camp in the desert outside the Forever Gate of Rhagnorak. From behind a mask of artificial darkness shrouding his face, he stared at a world map arrayed before him. The cities he had destroyed were colored red. So far, there were only five of them.
He was genuinely worried. The alien attack had been unexpected, and made him doubt his plans. He almost wanted to restore control to the Children, but he knew there was nothing they could do any better than him. It was the machines that actually fought back to protect them from the Satori. He would just have to trust that the ship's defenses would hold out.
The tent flap lifted and one of the guardsmen stuck his head inside. "Sir, the Dragon Lady has returned."
"Send her inside," Amoch said, glad for the distraction.
The woman who had once called herself Gemma entered the tent. She was dressed in body-fitting silver armor covered in swirls and curlicues. The hilt of a samurai sword protruded above her right shoulder, where it was sheathed on her back. She still wore the silver mask that was forged into the shape of a Chinese dragon over her face. That was a good sign of her loyalty. Then again, perhaps she'd simply grown to like the powers it granted her, which included the ability to see the location of any human beings behind walls, among other things.
"It is done," the Dragon Lady said. "I have touched the disk to the forehead of the gol Nine, as you asked. After the object vanished within her, I escaped before she could question me."
Amoch nodded his head in respect. "I am pleased." That disk trapped Ari on the Inside: one less problem he had to worry about.
"What do you want me to do now?" the woman asked.
"Report to my general Hadrian and await further instructions."
She turned to go, but paused. "You promised when the time came, I would be given Nine to kill."
"And you will. When the time comes."
She nodded slowly, and then left. An interesting tool, that one. Bent on vengeance. The most useful tools were, he supposed.
Sammuel reported in shortly thereafter.
"Any sign of my dear wife?" Amoch asked the man.
"No, master," Sammuel said. "It appears she obeyed your order, this time."
Sammuel was to inform him if any of the eyes and ears spotted Wraylor on the Inside. She was under strict orders from Amoch to remain in the real world. Wraylor had warned Ari of the attack on Crane, and while Amoch had managed to use the warning to his advantage, he was not very happy with his wife, not in the least. She was banned from the Inside until further notice. He wasn't sure if he would even allow her to fight at his side in the final battle. She was too much of a wild card.
I should have never freed her from the dream world.
He heard shouting outside. Then the clang of steel on steel, along with a few lightning blasts. The fabric of the tent caved inward on one side as a human body struck it and got lost in the folds.
Amoch waited patiently, not perturbed in the least. Unlike the outside world, nothing that occurred in the Inside bothered him.
He focused on the entrance and tightened his fingers on the bone staff he held. He let the vitra from within it fill him.
He wondered absently if Ari had finally found him. Am I ready, mentally, to face her?
He heard more steel clashes, these just outside the entrance. One of the guardsmen came flying inside, body spewing blood from a mortal wound in the torso.
Brute followed the man inside. A snarl twisted the four-armed creature's face.
Not Ari after all then. A pity.
Amoch froze the red-skinned beast.
"Why did you have to do that?" Amoch regarded the lifeless, torn body of the guardsman at his feet. "He was one of my best."
Brute didn't answer.
"Ah." Amoch waved a hand, releasing the invisible lock on Brute's lips.
"They would not let me pass!" Brute said.
Amoch shrugged. "I should have warned them, I suppose. The problem is, I wasn't expecting you. What are you doing here? You were to seek out those who call themselves Keepers and eliminate them one by one. You were to return to aid me in the razing of certain cities only when summoned. And I did not summon you. Don't tell me I have to erase your program and start again."
"Do not erase, Amoch-krub," Brute said. "Someone found Brute."
"Someone found you?" Amoch thrummed his fingers impatiently on his staff. Was he going to have to reprogram the thing after all? "Explain."
Brute's eyes slid to the right, as if the creature was trying to look behind. But since it could not turn its head, that was impossible, of course.
The tent flap at the entrance parted and a man came inside. Strangely, he was dressed in a suit and tie. The individual dropped to his knees and knelt when he saw him.
"It's true!" the man said, his gaze on the floor. "You live!"
Amoch didn't recognize him. And the man most certainly couldn't see Amoch's face, which yet lay shrouded in artificial darkness beneath the hood.
"Who are you?" Amoch said.
The man still didn't look up. "Great One, I am here to serve you. Forgive my past transgressions. I rea
lize now I was not yet worthy of your reward. Tell me what I must do to serve you. Tell me what I must do to be worthy."
Great One? The man could only mean One, the former primary AI that had been infected with the alien virus. Amoch had modeled his avatar after that AI.
"Who are you?" Amoch repeated.
"I am Jeremy Flanners, rightful mayor of Severest. Your humble, everlasting servant."
Jeremy Flanners, the Satori surrogate who had created the virus that had wreaked havoc throughout the computer system? The very same Jeremy who had gone insane, and apparently worshiped his own creation?
Amoch nodded slowly. If it was indeed him, Amoch could certainly find a use for the man. Still, he would have to watch him very closely, and keep Jeremy on a tight leash.
He smiled behind that mask of darkness. Leashes were his specialty. "Rise, Jeremy."
five
Tanner and Hoodwink made their way through the robot-patrolled corridors. They paused at the various hatches to check if there were any terminals in the compartments beyond that allowed for "zero mode" connections. Finally they found a small storage closet near hydroponics that still had a few wireless access ports with the mode enabled.
"This will work," Hoodwink said. He plugged the port into his belly and his eyes moved back and forth rapidly as he accessed the umbilical user interface.
A moment later Hoodwink announced: "I've managed to restore much of my access. I can wake the Keepers. And I believe I can contact the other members of the watch."
"Jacob is the commander of the second watch," Tanner said.
"I'll try him," Hoodwink said. A moment later: "Jacob, this is Hoodwink and Tanner. Yes, I'm back. Can you make your way to the main Control Room? You can't?" He glanced at Tanner. "They're trapped. We'll be right there, Jacob."
