by Isaac Hooke
“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.”
eight
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.
Before he reached it the shuttle pitched forward precariously, spinning out of control.
“Talk to me, Zak!” Hoodwink said. His stomach was doing flip-flops.
“The nuke just detonated,” Zak said.
Zak managed to regain control of the craft a few seconds later. Hoodwink hauled himself into his chair and buckled the seatbelt.
“Show me what we’ve got,” Hoodwink said.
Zak switched the viewscreen to the aft external camera.
Above the alien hull behind them, glittering debris filled the void from horizon to horizon, a million bits of crumpled metal and ice ranging in size from specks to large boulders. Large swaths of mist gradually dissipated in the gaps between those fragments, the remnants of the flash-cooled water that had escaped before the compartment seals kicked in.
Beneath that debris, a kilometer-wide blast crater marred the hull.
“Well lads,” Hoodwink said over the squadron line. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves the arsehole we’ve been looking for.”
TANNER MADE HIS way across the surface of the Jovian moon. He carried a bulky briefcase in one hand that would serve as a signal booster, allowing him to stay in contact with the Control Room. The light from his helmet lamp lit the way. That illumination had an oddly sharp quality, given that there was no atmosphere for the photons to diffuse in.
It wasn’t the first time he’d found himself bounding across that icy landscape. The last time he had been out there, Ari had just died, and three robots had been hunting him, intent on his destruction.
The gravity outside was almost a seventh that of the artificial field aboard the ship. Even with the bulky spacesuit, he weighed only forty pounds. As such, with each step he bounded more than two paces. He had to lean in the direction he wanted to go, keeping his center of mass forward.
On average, the icy crust of Ganymede was one hundred kilometers deep, but the current area resided atop a mountain range; if he looked carefully he could see the outline of yellow peaks encased in the ice below. They were tricky to discern, given the layer of sand, grit and silicate that sheathed the surface in most places—debris from the aerial bombardments that had dug through to the rock below.
He came across the alien flyer. It was a triangular-shaped thing, about twice as wide as it was tall. Tanner circled the metallic object, but there were no obvious openings.
He approached the hull, which was covered in strange symbols. He pointed his blaster at an angle to guard against ricochets and released a shot.
The plasma blast struck the metal but was absorbed. No damage. He tried again. Not a dent.
Well that’s not going to work.
Via his helmet aReal he transmitted a message to the Control Room. He wasn’t sure the signal would penetrate the hull of the human ship, even with the signal booster he carried.
“Stanson, can you still read me?” he sent.
“I can,” came the digitally warped reply.
“Can you pipe me into Hoodwink?” Tanner asked.
A moment later Hoodwink’s voice came over the line. His voice sounded even more distorted than Stanson’s had. “You better tell me Ari’s with you.”
Tanner felt a moment of shame. “No, Hoodwink. I—”
“What the hell are you doing!” Hoodwink lambasted over the line. “You’re supposed to be with Ari. You promised me you would protect her.”
“I know,” Tanner said quickly. “I’m sorry. And I will. I—”
“Do you remember what you told me?” Hoodwink interrupted.
Tanner shifted uncomfortably. “Uh, yes?”
“You said: I’ll never let her die again, Hood. Never. I swear it. And do you remember what I told you?”
Tanner felt himself growing smaller inside by the moment. “That if I lost her, I better not wake up.”
“And I still mean that,” Hoodwink said over the comm. “Anything happens to her, you better damn well be dead, too.”
Tanner swallowed. “Okay. Can you help me now?”
There was a pause before Hoodwink answered. “I’m kind of in the middle of something, Tanner.”
But you could take time away from what you were doing to yell at me?
“I’ve found Jeremy’s Satori flyer,” Tanner transmitted. “I need to get inside. Any ideas?”
“Jeremy?” Hoodwink returned. He sounded stunned. “The bastard followed me all the way from Earth?”
“Apparently so,” Tanner transmitted. “Couriers dispatched by the Keepers reported that he was part of the battle in Kismet, and had attacked Ari. Obviously we can’t let that go unpunished. I want to break into his flyer and stop him.”
“Attacking Ari!” Hoodwink said. “How dare he. When you get inside that flyer, you kill him, you hear?”
“That’s my intention, Hood.”
“Good,” came the response.
“So how do I get in?” Tanner asked. When no answer came, he added: “Hoodwink, still there?”
“Just a moment.”
A minute passed. Two.
A data request icon abruptly appeared on his aReal.
Tanner accepted. “What’s this?”
“An encoded EM wave. I had to go back to my Satori body to get you this. I hope you brought one of those portable signal boosters with you.”
“I did,” Tanner returned.
“Good. You can use it to transmit the wave.”
“The wave...?” Tanner asked as the data progress bar updated.
“An emulation of the Satori mind transmissions,” Hoodwink said. “An override code that will open the outer airlock of any Satori flyer you encounter.”
“Very nice,” Tanner sent. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” Hoodwink replied. “By the way, how is Ari doing?”
“I don’t really know,” Tanner admitted. “Other than the fact she’s still alive. I plan to return to the Inside the moment I’ve dealt with Jeremy. By the way, we’ve captured Kade and his fellow rebels, in case you haven’t figured it out yet. So at least that problem is dealt with.”
“That’s something, anyway,” Hoodwink returned. “This is probably the last time I’m going to be able to get in touch with you for a while, so unless there’s something else of utmost urgency you need, I’ll have to bid you farewell. Kill Jeremy, then take care of Ari like you promised.”
“All right,” Tanner said, though he doubted Ari would need much taking care of. “But if this doesn’t work, I’m calling you back.”
Hoodwink didn’t answer.
With his aReal, Tanner piped the alien signal into the booster and waited. He couldn’t hear or see the actual waves, of course. So he waited.
Ten seconds passed.
Thirty.
He tried the transmission again.
Another thirty seconds passed.
He thought the signal hadn’t worked, and was about to call Hoodwink back when the hull shuddered beside him.
A small hatch spiraled open in the side.
Tanner withdrew the blaster from his belt and lowered himself into the opening.
A man-sized pod resided on the metallic deck within. It reminded him of the pods on the Hercules ship that held the human sleepers. The central membrane had burst outward, as if it had already given birth to whatever it contained. Jeremy’s surrogate, undoubtedly.
The hatch abruptly sealed behind him, and the airlock began to fill with greenish-tinged water. It took a full minute until the compartment was submerged.
What could have only been the inner hatch spiraled open, and Tanner swam inside the central portion of the flyer.
Some sort of sea creature took up most of the space within. It was an ugly thing with a bulbous, tentacled torso that resembled a jellyfish, and lower appendages that could best be described as starfish-like in shape.
Jeremy must have alerted the system to wake his alien body if an intruder entered, because those tentacles abruptly flung out and wrapped around Tanner’s spacesuit. One of them ripped the pulse gun away, while another confiscated the briefcase.
Some of the tentacles squeezed, pulling in different directions, trying to rip his body apart. Other tentacles had barbs that pierced the fabric of his suit, and the toxic water began to seep inside.
nine
Ari struggled against the invisible binds that held her, but she could neither move nor speak. Brute carried her upon its back. Briar and the others were gone: their bodies smashed into the wall of the house. Dead. There was a chance they lived on in the real world, since they resided in pods on the Outside. She, however, would die for real when her turn came.
She didn’t fear death. How could she, after what she had seen? The golden gate, towering into the sky. The sense of peace, and love. Still, for all of that she would miss Tanner. And Hoodwink.
I can’t die. Not yet. It’s too soon.
Brute followed Amoch through the winding streets until they reached a hilltop that overlooked the southern edge of Kismet. Amoch, Brute, Jeremy and Gemma climbed that hilltop until the entire city stretched before them.
“Set her down,” Amoch commanded.
Brute complied.
Ari was lifted into the air by an invisible force, her arms and legs forced outward so that she was spread-eagled.
“I’m going to destroy Kismet, Ari,” Amoch said. “And you are going to watch. In the meantime, as punishment for killing my dear wife, Brute here is going to end your existence. Very, very slowly.”
I didn’t kill you wife! Ari wanted to say, but she couldn’t open her mouth.
Brute withdrew a skinning knife from the back of its belt.
“Brute’s going to flay you alive, you see,” Amoch continued. “And as your gol body slowly dies, deprived of its skin, you will watch the city die. I am going to grant no one quarter, because of what you did. You will watch the citizens dying, knowing it’s your fault that they awaken in the pod world, gasping for breath, their ribs breaking as they struggle to inhale for the first time. Brute, if you will?”
Brute tore off her clothes so that she wore only the skin-tight blue outfit that was an intrinsic part of her gol body. The beast then stabbed the knife into the cuff above her wrist, and peeled both the skin and fabric back, revealing the gory muscle tissue underneath. Blood dripped from the exposed fibers. The pain was intense. Worse than anything she had ever experienced as a gol.
Amoch started down the hill, but paused to add: “You’ll notice that I’ve disabled your ability to ignore pain. You’re going to suffer, Ari. You’re going to feel every stab, every ripping of skin from muscle and bone. And I’ve also raised a teleportation shield around the area, in case you’re still holding out for a rescue. No one can move you, despite that you carry a tracker hidden in your computerized inventory. This is your end.”
Brute applied the knife to the base
of her torn skin, and sawed while pulling back, releasing the dermis layer from the muscle tissue underneath. The agony was unbearable, so much so that Ari actually blacked out.
She awakened a moment later, gasping for breath, her lower arm throbbing with every heartbeat. The entire area had been flayed.
“You cheat me,” Brute was saying. “No falling unconscious!”
Ari almost laughed. Like I have any control over that.
Amoch had descended to the bottom of the hill. He unleashed carnage by alternately launching walls of flame, lightning and acid. He crushed buildings with a wave of his staff. People fled screaming from their homes, and he exploded their bodies into plumes of red mist.
Brute began sawing at the skin of her upper arm next.
Jeremy coughed.
In her distress, Ari had almost forgotten that she had an audience. She would have looked directly at Jeremy and Gemma in that moment, but she couldn’t turn her head, and saw them only at the periphery of her vision. It was probably for the best: Jeremy would simply sneer, most likely.
“Well this is just dandy,” Jeremy suddenly said to Gemma. “But why should Brute have the honor of killing her?”
Gemma didn’t answer, her expression hidden behind the dragon mask she wore.
“This isn’t right,” Jeremy continued. “I want to end her existence in my own fashion, in my own time. Preferably with Hoodwink present.”
Jeremy abruptly withdrew his fire sword. “Release her, Brute.”
Brute paused. “You have no power over me, krub.”
Jeremy strode forward angrily. “I said—”
Brute swatted at Jeremy with one arm, and the man went flying backward several paces. “Fool.”
Brute continued to work on her arm.
Jeremy clambered angrily up the hill.
Gemma stepped between Jeremy and Brute. She drew her curved katana.
“Stay back,” Gemma warned Jeremy.
He ignored her and continued his approach. From his sword he unleashed a powerful stream of flame at Gemma, which hurtled her into Brute. Off balance, the creature slammed into Ari, who didn’t move, frozen in place as she was by Amoch.
