by Isaac Hooke
Brute recovered and batted Gemma away. She collided with Jeremy and the two rolled together down the hill. They separated after a few paces and engaged in swordplay.
Jeremy appeared to have the upper hand, at least at first: Gemma retreated under the surge of blows, barely able to keep up. Occasionally he launched flames, sending her sprawling. She always rose again, her armor protecting her from the worst of it.
As they fought, Ari felt a surge of hope. Though Jeremy wanted her dead in the end, if he could defeat Gemma and then turn on Brute, at the very least Ari would be granted a respite from the skinning knife. And if Jeremy somehow managed to defeat Brute, then she would have even longer to plot her escape while Jeremy figured out how to kill her “in his own fashion.”
It was an odd feeling, rooting for a man she hated.
Come on, Jeremy, she thought as Brute’s knife dug once more into her flesh. Take off her mask. Then you can defeat her. Come on!
Though she had once pitied Gemma, most of the compassion she’d felt had vanished when the woman had stabbed her in the back.
Kill her!
And then, abruptly, Jeremy vanished entirely from the simulation.
All the welling hope within Ari faded, leaving only the excruciating pain.
Gemma returned to watch Brute finish its task.
ten
Hoodwink studied the bottom of the blast crater as Zak brought the shuttle into the expansive wound the nuke had torn. He initiated a full integrity scan.
“There.” He highlighted a smooth section with his aReal and transmitted the location to Zak. “Set her down here.”
Zak flew toward the targeted area.
The wide valley of the crater soon blocked the stars on all four sides. The basin was jagged in some places, with pipes and other structures protruding, while completely smooth in others. Hoodwink zoomed in on the walls of that steel valley and clearly discerned separate decks; it was like looking at the cutaway view of some gargantuan metal dollhouse.
The shuttle landed on the area Hoodwink had picked out, a location that once formed a bulkhead within the vast inner ocean of the mothership.
“Activating mounting magnets,” Zak announced.
Hoodwink’s chair vibrated.
“We’re solid,” Zak said.
Hoodwink unbuckled. “Let’s go.”
“You sure you’re up for this?” Zak asked, his voice echoing from the speakers within Hoodwink’s helmet.
Hoodwink paused. “What do you mean?”
“This is your race we’re attacking here,” Zak said.
“I’ve come this far,” Hoodwink said. “I can’t turn back now. And to clarify: they’re not my race anymore. How could they be? I’ve lived too long as a human. That said, I don’t want to see all Satori die. They’re not evil. Misguided, yes, but evil, no.”
“How many Satori are aboard this mothership?” Zak asked.
“Well, a colony ship like this is capable of holding up to two hundred thousand Satori. However, I’m not sure they loaded the full complement. I believe their mission was to journey to Ganymede to destroy the humans here, and then they were to return to Earth. So I’m guessing it’s manned by a skeleton crew of about two hundred Satori.”
“What if you’re wrong?” Zak said. “Do you really want to be responsible for the death of two hundred thousand of your kind?”
Hoodwink cringed. He had already been responsible for close to that number when he unleashed a different bomb under the oceans of Earth.
“Hopefully the Shell—the AI of this ship—will recognize what we’re doing,” Hoodwink said. “And it will begin evacuation measures to save most of the crew. And if not, well, their deaths are on the hands of the AI, not me. That’s how I look at it, anyway.”
Zak shrugged inside his suit. “Okay then.” His voice seemed thick with judgment, as if he thought: I wouldn’t betray my own race.
Hoodwink had met similar men before. Slightly insulted, he said: “All you need to know is that I deal with my conscience in my own way. Now if you’re done testing my loyalties, can we do this?”
Hoodwink floated from his seat and moved to the cargo area, where he grabbed the lone laser rifle from the armory. He also took the satchel containing the explosives and scooped up the bulky laser cutter.
Hoodwink shoved himself to the airlock, opened it, and propelled himself outside.
The other two shuttles had landed nearby. Hoodwink’s alien flyer remained overhead, hovering five hundred meters above the blast crater.
He vented propellant and steered toward the shuttle that contained their final nuke. The external ramp was down, and Klay was already coming outside, guiding the floating warhead. Klay carried his own satchel of explosives, along with the only other laser rifle the party possessed.
Hoodwink strapped the cutter to the top of the nuke, where Klay had already secured his own. Then he grabbed one side of the warhead and helped guide it.
Zak took point. Myerson brought up the rear. All of them floated, venting propellant to advance.
“Where are we taking it?” Klay transmitted over the comm.
Hoodwink indicated the cutaway view of the decks ahead. “Once we’re inside, we take every turn we can coreward.”
“How do we know which direction is coreward?” Klay asked.
“Use the directional indicators in your aReal,” Hoodwink said.
They reached the lowermost border of the steel valley and entered the open passage at its bottom. There was no gravity inside, so they floated onward. There was no light, either: they activated their headlamps, the cones of illumination reflecting from the icy steel walls.
Hoodwink took a downward branch in the passage, heading coreward. He halted before a breach seal that had closed to protect the compartment beyond.
The plan was to use the explosives to open such blockages. When those became exhausted, the landing party would switch to the cutters.
Hoodwink planted the charges. While he did that, the rest of the group retreated a safe distance and positioned themselves flat on the deck.
Hoodwink rejoined the others. He checked that a) the laser cutters were tied down, and b) the mounting magnets glued the nuke to the deck. Satisfied, he lowered himself to a clear area and activated similar magnets in his boots and gloves. He felt his body press into the surface.
“Everybody ready?” he asked.
A chorus of affirmative replies came over his helmet speakers.
He triggered the remote detonator with his aReal.
The deck shook. He saw the shockwave of the released gases from the charges, but it quickly vanished, replaced by the greenish water that gushed from the breach. The liquid boiled and desublimated almost instantly, forming a cloud of fine, frozen ice pellets similar to mist that swept rapidly over the party. If his fellow astronauts hadn’t been glued to the surface, that mist likely would have carried them away.
Hoodwink could hardly see through the thick fog. He did, however, hear the impacts of the tiny pellets that continually assailed his suit. It reminded him of the sound of snow hitting the windows during a blizzard on a cold winter night in Severest. That life had seemed so long ago.
He thought of Ari on the Inside, and prayed she was all right. Tanner had sworn to protect her, but he had already betrayed that promise. The last time he spoke with Tanner, the Child had been on the surface of Ganymede, trying to get into a flyer that apparently contained Jeremy.
Javiol. Hoodwink couldn’t believe the Satori had followed him all the way back to Ganymede. Hoodwink had hoped Javiol died in the nuclear explosion on Earth. No such luck, apparently.
Hoodwink supposed Tanner hadn’t completely gone back on his word, because eliminating Jeremy would protect Ari in the end. If Tanner showed the alien mercy for whatever reason, then Hoodwink would simply have to do the murderous deed himself. A creature like that, one hell-bent on vengeance, one who wouldn’t think twice about destroying a world to achieve it, couldn’t
be allowed to live. Yes, Hoodwink would set things right when he got back.
Assuming he actually returned, of course.
An object abruptly appeared in the thick mist and drew his attention back to the present moment. He thought it was made of metal, though he couldn’t be certain. As the explosive decompression sucked it past, he caught a glimpse of a steel tail smashing into the deck just in front of him: it tore a wide gash as the owner struggled to find purchase, and then it was gone.
That was a Satoroid, of course. A robot built in the image of the satori.
Another Satoroid appeared in the flowing mist.
“Watch out!” Hoodwink said.
The robot flew past before he could even finish the words. There wasn’t much he or the others could have actually done to avoid the thing anyway, not when they were all glued to the deck.
The boarding party waited several more moments like that, and finally the mist abated. Some of it lingered in the passage, eerie testament to the water that once existed in the area beyond.
The party released the magnets that held them in place, hoisted the nuke from the surface, and floated onward.
Beyond the breach, the passage widened. Pockets of green mist remained inside. He spotted another Satoroid. It slowly revolved in place, its tail occasionally twitching, its rotors useless in the vacuum environment.
“Give it a wide berth,” Hoodwink instructed his companions.
They crossed that passage and reached another coreward seal. They breached it in a similar manner, endured the resultant decompression, and continued onward. Eventually they ran out of explosives and switched to the laser cutters. The actual breaching proved slightly more difficult, as Hoodwink had to mount himself to the bulkhead right beside the seal before applying the cutter. Mist would stream out until he had carved a big enough hole for the internal pressure to tear the rest of the seal away. When that happened, he had to hunker down and wait until all of the water boiled and desublimated, hoping the whole time that any robots didn’t strike him with their tails as they were dragged out.
As the boarding party proceeded deeper, the steel yielded to mummified coralline, which had accumulated on the bulkheads. The Satori purposely grew it to give their artificial oceans a more homey feeling.
While Hoodwink breached one particular seal, the mist outflow abruptly ceased. He finished cutting out a rectangular portion of the door, and peeled it back to reveal a fatty portion of flesh blocking the passage.
It could be only the giant body of a Xeviathi that plugged the hole, one of the slave classes. That meant he was close to his goal.
Hoodwink took his laser rifle and fired twice at the organic blockage. The insides of the beast gushed outward in succession, turning into a sickly green-red mist that soon subsided. With the third rifle shot, that misty gore continued unabated, and soon the Xeviathi was pulled entirely through the hole as its innards turned inside out, sucked into space through the wound Hoodwink had created. Bones smashed into the surrounding bulkheads, nearly striking the party members a few times.
“This is disgusting, Hood,” Zak said.
“I won’t disagree,” Hoodwink told him.
With the Xeviathi gone, the water within was free to mist through. Several minutes passed, with the party glued to the deck nearby, waiting for the outflow to end. Twice more the hole became plugged by a Xeviathi. Twice more Hoodwink removed the blockage with some rifle blasts.
When all the water finally boiled away, the group entered what proved to be the vastest cavern yet. They purposely kept close to the lower deck as they advanced.
They hadn’t gone far when Zak spotted something.
“What the hell are those?” Zak said.
Hoodwink zoomed in and saw the head-sized robots crawling along the deck. They had the elongated, tentacled bodies of squids, with crab-like claws on the underside that allowed them to latch onto surfaces.
“Defense robots,” Hoodwink said. “Another variant of Satoroid. Small, deadly things.” He slid the laser rifle down from his shoulder. “Don’t let them latch onto you. One of those breaches your suit, you’re dead.”
Hoodwink and Klay fired at the squid robots and disabled them one by one. At first the pair had ample time to target the next squids, but as the enemy numbers increased, they found themselves struggling to keep up.
Whenever a squid got close, it pushed off from the surface and vented water to propel itself toward the party members. Hoodwink had three close calls so far, and he began to wish he still had some explosive charges left.
“Look up!” Zak shouted.
Hoodwink spotted other metal squids descending from above, where they had crawled, previously unseen, upon the distant overhead.
“Retreat!” Hoodwink said. “We have to turn back or we’ll be surrounded!”
And so they grabbed the nuke and vented propellant, retreating toward the passage that led into the cavern. Hoodwink and Klay occasionally paused to shoot at the squids.
When they reached the broken seal, the party members piled through.
“So what now?” Myerson said.
“We continue forward,” Hoodwink replied. “And find another path.”
“But they’ll chase us the whole way!” Myerson exclaimed. He was staring into the breach, obviously terrified. “They’ll block our retreat.”
“No one ever said this was a mission we would survive,” Hoodwink said softly.
“Uh,” Zak said. “Look.” He pointed down the passage.
Up ahead, more of the squids had appeared. Hundreds of them.
The deadly things completely blocked off all forward advancement.
eleven
Choking, Tanner felt like some rag doll that two kids were fighting over in the schoolyard. Jeremy’s Satori body had wrapped itself around Tanner; those appendages squeezed so tightly he could barely inhale. The tentacles around his torso pulled in the opposite direction to those encasing his waist and lower body, threatening to tear him apart. Barbs on those tentacles pierced his suit in three places, and the toxic water flowed inside. So far none of the stingers had actually touched his skin underneath: he had a feeling he wouldn’t survive very long if that happened.
He wished he had a strength-enhancing exoskeleton to fight back with, but Hoodwink and the pilots had taken all of the ones that were compatible with spacesuits. He only had what little strength he had left, and his wits. Both were proving futile at the moment.
The phosphenes of hypoxia spotted his vision, and he felt himself close to losing consciousness.
Black out and you die.
And just when he couldn’t take it anymore, just when he was sure either his suit, his body, or both must tear in half, or that he must lose consciousness, the alien loosened its hold, apparently growing tired.
Tanner took a deep breath. The phosphenes cleared. He spotted the tentacle that held his blaster. Before the alien could squeeze him again, he vented propellant from his suit and hurtled himself through the water toward it.
The appendages that enwrapped his body followed loosely for a moment. One of the barbs pulled free.
The weary Satori suddenly realized what he was doing and tightened its hold, but the alien was too late.
Tanner tore the blaster from the Satori’s grasp and spun it toward the beast. Before he could fire another tentacle shot out and pinned the weapon to his chest.
Dammit. So close.
Tanner struggled to free the weapon, but it may as well have been glued to his body. The alien squeezed him tighter than ever.
He forced the weapon upward, millimeter by millimeter, and fired at a nearby tentacle, severing it.
The alien drew him closer to its main body. The motion shifted his weapon slightly, so that the aim was clear of his suit. He fired.
The plasma bolt tore into one of the Satori’s limbs, amputating it as well.
The alien responded by squeezing harder and curling all its free tentacles from view.
Ta
nner fired again, and that time the blast struck the bulkhead. He was hoping for a penetrating shot, or at the very least a ricochet, but as before the alien metal merely absorbed the blow.
He couldn’t breathe. His vision was once more nearly consumed by phosphenes. His feet were soaked to the ankle in the burning liquid that had flowed through the gaps in his suit.
Then he saw it through the phosphenes: a portal of some kind. He could see the stars beyond.
Why hadn’t I noticed that on the outside?
If he could just aim the weapon a few centimeters higher...
Feeling the veins pop out on his forehead, he strained against the Satori’s hold. No use.
Perhaps...
Via the aReal in his helmet, he vented propellant from the back area of his suit. The tentacles blocked most of the egress ports, but apparently some were free, because his body tilted a few degrees.
He fired.
The energy blast struck the portal dead on.
It didn’t penetrate. The portal simply absorbed the blow like the bulkhead.
In desperation he tried again. Again. One last time.
The fourth shot did it.
The portal melted away.
As the water violently evacuated the chamber, Tanner and the alien were dragged toward the blast hole. The Satori wasn’t small enough to fit, nor was it big enough to seal the hole entirely. The alien thrust out its tentacles, releasing Tanner to grab onto whatever it could.
In moments all the water had vented and the expulsive force ceased. Tanner and the alien descended to the bottom of the flyer.
Above him, the Satori flopped its body about violently. Those motions became less animated with each passing moment, until they ceased entirely. Its body had turned gray and white.
And so ends Jeremy.
Tanner slid himself out from underneath the stiff tentacles. One of them broke off.
Because of the depressurization, his epidermis had been sucked into the tiny perforations the barbs had made in the suit, and the skin formed temporary, painful seals. He would have a few bruises, later. Not to mention vacuum burns.
