The Forever Gate Ultimate Edition

by Isaac Hooke

  "You would have agreed with me only a few short days ago," Hoodwink said. "Has realizing your nature really affected your opinion so?"

  "It has," Sarella said. "I have seen the truth. The Satori cannot be changed."

  "If that were true," Hoodwink said. "Then you would not be helping me right now."

  She squeezed his palm with one hand. "Perhaps you're right. Perhaps others can change, too." She smiled mischievously. "If we force them to become human."

  Hoodwink grinned. "Indeed."

  Hoodwink thought of something. He got up, edged past Sarella, and opened the storage closet. There was only one pressure suit.

  "Those damn fools," Hoodwink said. "I told them to pack two suits. They didn't know you were coming, so I told them it was to serve as a backup. And they didn't do it!" He had gotten them to pack enough oxygen for two people by lying about the journey's requirements, but if they completed the mission and reached Ganymede, without two suits there would be no way to open the airlock, not without killing one of them.

  "We can still go back and get them to give us another one?" Sarella asked hopefully.

  Hoodwink checked with the AI. "No. There's not enough fuel to fight the weight of that warhead. This is a one way journey. There's no going back. We either succeed, or we die."

  "But I die either way, apparently." Sarella glanced at the suit and laughed softly. "I didn't want to come anyway. Do you remember? I told you I wanted to stay behind and help humanity rebuild. Though that was before I knew I was a Satori. But I guess I get my wish after all."

  "I'll figure out a way to get you outside of the craft when we return to Ganymede," Hoodwink said slowly. "I will."

  He squeezed past her to return to his seat. Before the mission had even begun, it felt like they'd already lost.

  Then he had an idea.

  "I'll grab another surrogate body from the Farm in Laranth," Hoodwink said, referring to the place where the Satori grew the surrogate bodies. "The pods there are completely self-contained. They're like pressure suits, but better."

  "Will there be time?" Sarella said.

  "The countdown is fully programmable," Hoodwink said. "We'll make the time."

  The hours passed monotonously.

  Gray-colored specks began to float past at the extreme range of the EM emitters. He wasn't sure if those were Satori or the robot satoroids. So far no alien entities had molested the craft. Still, he expected the colony to be on high alert, especially since the Shell knew of the nuclear warhead.

  Finally a pair of the underwater robots emerged from the murk to intercept them.

  It was time to test the noise maker the scientists had installed for him. He opened up the interface on the aReal.

  Satoroids communicated differently than robots designed by humans. They didn't use EM waves like the wireless Internet, but instead communicated like whales and other marine animals once did, via holographic sound. It was a backup protocol to the telepathic method used to communicate with the Satori, one that allowed the robots to fill the oceans with chatter that would not disturb the quadminds, as the Satori could not hear in the normal sense. The Shell often used that band to communicate subversively, sending messages it did not wish the Hivemind or other Satori to intercept.

  Hoodwink activated the speakers, transmitting a signal that mimicked the scout class of the satoroids, confusing them into thinking that the submersible was one of them. It worked.

  One of the satoroids paused near the front, apparently curious about the inverted black object the submersible held between its pincers. Would the custom magnetic shielding the scientists had installed into the Mk210 hold up to scrutiny? Or would the satoroid detect the bomb?

  Abruptly the robot spun away, flicking its metal tail to rejoin the other satoroid, which had long ago lost interest.

  Hoodwink slumped in relief.

  He and Sarella continued the long descent. He left the noise maker running in the background to deter any future encounters.

  A black mass soon appeared up ahead. That cloudy substance enveloped the entire colony in a massive half dome that protected it from any human weapons. It was comprised of innumerable nanobots, quintillions of them, that would swarm around any impact site and solidify. That cloud shield had won the Satori the war, protecting their flyers and colonies from even nuclear attacks.

  Via the noise maker, Hoodwink transmitted the necessary signals to those nanobots, who also utilized that backup communication protocol, and the black cloud cleared from their path. Such a powerful protective force, and yet so easy to circumvent... Hoodwink hadn't given the bypass signature to the rebels, as he wasn't sure he trusted them with that ability. With it, humanity could stage attacks against the various Satori undersea colonies, something that was hardly conducive to the peace he planned.

  Once the submersible passed through, massive gray structures of coralline appeared on his aReal. The craft was nearing the underwater valley that lay on the outskirts of the great Satori city of Laranth.

  He brought the vessel down and steered between the coralline.

  An object abruptly emerged from behind a thick outcropping beside them.

  "What is—"

  Before Hoodwink could react, the object rammed the submersible.

  29

  Alarms started to go off. On his aReal display, a message flashed:

  Hull integrity, sixty-five percent.

  Hoodwink quickly scanned the twin external video feeds, but apparently whatever had struck them had vanished behind one of the reefs on either side of the craft.

  "What the hell was that?" Sarella said.

  "I don't know," Hoodwink told her. "But whatever it was, it's gone now."

  Hoodwink shut off the alarms and continued the descent. There were gaping holes in the coralline to the left and right. An attack could come again from either side.

  "Is there a way to replay the video of the attack?" Hoodwink asked the aReal's AI.

  "Yes." The AI returned.

  Hoodwink waited, and finally said in exasperation: "Care to tell me how?"

  The AI replayed the attack. It was another human submersible, a veritable twin to their own. Probably had the same paint.

  "It has to be Jeremy," Hoodwink said. "There can be no other explanation. Somehow he's been spying on us all this time. The question is, how?"

  And then Hoodwink had a revelation.

  He turned toward Sarella. "It's you."

  She looked at him. There was panic on her face. "What's me?"

  "There was no way Jeremy could have known where we were. We swept the camp each day for signs of micro-drones. The commandos fired smart bullets every few hours just to be safe. Nothing was ever discovered. There were no drones out there."

  "Are you accusing me of something?" Sarella said, her voice shaking.

  "You're his spy. It all makes sense now. I gave you all the data files to send to the rebels. You had the formula for the paint. You gave it—"

  "The paint didn't work, don't you remember? The scientists had to change it."

  But Hoodwink didn't hear. "I know it's you, Sarella. Tell me how you're doing this. How you feed him your information."

  She swallowed nervously.

  He considered retrieving the blaster from his belt to force her to confess. That wasn't a good idea: he was in much too close proximity to her. She could easily strike out and throw off his aim; if he hit the inside of the submersible with a plasma shot, the results could be devastating.

  Abruptly she covered her face in her hands.

  "I'm sorry," Sarella said.

  "The Return therapy was successful, wasn't it?" Hoodwink asked her.

  "No..." Sarella said. She couldn't meet his eyes.

  "I was a fool to bring you. A complete and utter fool. Skull was right. I understand now why your lovemaking was so mechanical. You were afraid of growing too attached to me. He, whom you planned to betray." He shook his head bitterly. "And now Jeremy is here, somewhere. And he'
s going to ruin all my carefully laid plans. Imagine what we could have accomplished if we had succeeded. If our species had united. If we shared information and resources, rather than competed for them. Humanity and the Satori working together, sharing the planet, living in harmony." He sighed wistfully. "It was a good dream."

  Sarella looked at him for the first time. "The Satori don't share planets. You know this, Hoodwink. Plumb the depths of your alien mind, and your human one. There can be no symbiosis between our two species. We're too warlike. This planet can belong to only one or the other, not both."

  "You're wrong," Hoodwink told her. "Our races can coexist, and they will. I'm going to shove peaceful coexistence down the throats of both species if I have to." He paused, regarding her uncertainly. "But first of all I have to decide what I'm going to do with you."

  Sarella's eyes drifted toward his belt. He followed her gaze, and realized she was staring at the blaster.

  She lunged at him.

  Hoodwink caught her hands too late. She grabbed the blaster.

  He forced her arms backward, bending her elbows, redirecting the weapon toward her torso. He stretched one finger past hers, around the trigger.

  "Hoodwink..." Sarella pleaded, looking into his eyes.

  "I can't let you ruin the mission," Hoodwink said.

  The cold, rational Satori part of him assumed control and he squeezed the trigger.

  Sarella collapsed onto the dashboard. Her arms flopped downward and Hoodwink easily pried the weapon from her grasp.

  "And so it's done," Hoodwink said, mostly to himself. "I wondered if I would be able to place humanity above those I loved. In the past, I was selfish. I would have destroyed humanity to save my daughter. But I've changed. The world comes first, now. I'm sorry, Sarella."

  He set the blaster down beside him, within reach in case she tried to attack him again.

  Her breathing came in slow, ragged gasps. Her head lay sideways on the dashboard. Her eyes were still open, though somewhat glazed.

  "The underwater robots injected a device into my quadmind," Sarella said, her voice almost a whisper. "This man, this Jeremy, spoke to me through the undersea AI. The Shell. He told me he would be watching everything I said and did. He told me that the moment I left your side, you would die."

  Hoodwink felt a sudden rising dread in the pit of his stomach.

  No.

  "That's why I begged you to take me along," Sarella continued weakly. "That's why I came down in the submersible with you. Every moment I spent in your presence, was another moment you would be alive. I— I should have told you. I'm sorry. I meant the best for you. For us. Even though I don't believe in peace, I would have followed you to the end. "

  She closed her eyes and died.

  "Why did you make a grab for the blaster?" Hoodwink shouted at her lifeless body. "Why?"

  Hoodwink felt suddenly nauseous. He rested his own head on the dashboard and stared into her lifeless face.

  No no no. What have I done?

  He closed his eyes. She wasn't a traitor. Hoodwink had murdered the only woman who cared for him on this planet. For what? To save a species that wanted to see him and his kind exterminated.

  I can't do this anymore.

  He opened his eyes and caressed her lifeless cheek.

  No. I have to do this. Otherwise she died for nothing. I can wallow in self-pity, or I can complete the mission. I will force a peace between those two thankless species. Sarella is still alive, anyway. Her Satori body, in any case.

  Unfortunately, he would never be able to find where that body was moored, not anymore. And that was the greatest sorrow of all, because there was a good chance she would die for real when he placed the bomb.

  The submersible shook as something rammed it once more. The alarms restarted.

  Hull integrity, forty-two percent.

  Hoodwink quickly sat up. On the twin displays of the aReal the enemy submersible was coming about to make another pass. Hoodwink quickly dove, bringing the craft precariously close to the bottom of the valley.

  "Hello there, Hoodwink," Jeremy's voice taunted over the submersible's radio system. "We have simply got to stop meeting like this."

  "What do you want?" Hoodwink transmitted angrily.

  "Oh I think you know," Jeremy returned. "I want you to suffer."

  The enemy submersible swooped in and Hoodwink narrowly dodged by cranking the throttle.

  Jeremy's craft scraped the valley floor behind him. It tilted sideways as it struck a rocky protuberance, then pulled up, straightened, and continued the pursuit.

  "The Shell couldn't break her," Jeremy sent. "It tried, oh how it tried. Everything your little girlfriend told you was the truth. She refused to join us. So, since she had no security codes installed, unlike you, the Shell came up with the implant idea to directly tap into her mind-body feed. She became our spy."

  Jeremy's submersible made another close pass that Hoodwink narrowly dodged. Evading him was made all the more difficult by the fact that Hoodwink's vessel was bogged down by the weight of a nuclear warhead. Jeremy had no such encumbrance.

  "I've heard everything she's said to you since then," Jeremy continued. "Watched you flirt. Watched you make love. Felt as you slid your hand between her ass crack. And oh, I so wanted you to believe that she had betrayed you. I'm absolutely thrilled with the result. Her death, by your very hand. Things couldn't have turned out for the better. All the more guilt for your conscience. You'll have to live with that for the rest of your pitiful undersea life."

  Hoodwink knew he wouldn't be able to keep this up forever. He didn't dare ram Jeremy, not with the hull integrity so low. Jeremy's own hull was probably just as severely damaged, but the man had less to lose. If Jeremy lost the submersible, and his life, he could simply respawn in another surrogate. Hoodwink, however, would lose a weapon he would have a very very hard time getting back. Likely the seaside resistance base was being razed to the ground at that very moment. The Shell would recover the Hidden Archives, and send robots to revisit all the nuclear silos, collecting any unspent weapons.

  Hoodwink had only one shot to place the weapon. And if he messed it up, which was looking more and more likely, he would never have another chance again.

  The valley floor abruptly opened up before him. It seemed bottomless. Up ahead, he spotted two satoroids in the distance.

  A plan formed in his mind. A somewhat desperate plan, but it was all he had.

  He headed straight toward the robots.

  The noise maker was supposed to be running in the background. He should have realized that it wasn't when the robots immediately swung toward him and began frantically whipping their tails. But Hoodwink was too absorbed in avoiding Jeremy's next ramming assault.

  As he neared the satoroids, he tried to send a message. That was when he finally noticed the external speakers were no longer functional. Jeremy must have damaged them in the attack.

  Hoodwink attempted to alter course but it was too late. The satoroids wrapped their steel tentacles around his submersible and began to squeeze.

  30

  The warnings sounded.

  Hull integrity, twenty-six percent.

  Hoodwink frantically tried the noise maker again but it refused to respond. He was slowly sinking toward the depths below, whose unseen bottom was far beyond the range of the EM emitters. The hull moaned as those tentacles tightened, adding stress to a frame that was already under immense amounts of pressure.

  Jeremy was laughing over the comm. "Nicely done, Hoodwink."

  The robots completely ignored Jeremy's submersible. Either Jeremy had working speakers installed, or he had notified the Shell ahead of time. He would be cut off from communicating with the alien AI down there, of course, as the aReal didn't function at those depths: the wireless signals employed by the human-designed device didn't penetrate the oceans.

  Jeremy's voice came again over the radio. "I'm going to enjoy watching you— oh, shit."

  Jer
emy's vessel began to descend. Apparently he had sustained more damage during the attack than Hoodwink had thought. The worst of it had probably occurred when Jeremy had slammed into the coralline floor of the raised valley behind them.

  Jeremy's craft continued to sink, and when the robots did nothing to aid him, that only confirmed for Hoodwink that Jeremy was indeed cut off from the Shell.

  Enjoy your death, bastard.

  The local AI announced the latest hull integrity at fifteen percent, reminding Hoodwink that his own death was imminent. The metal moaned terribly around him.

  Hoodwink had an idea. The submersible had an internal sound system. If he could reroute the output from the noise maker to that system, he might have a chance.

  "AI, can the sound from the internal sound system penetrate the hull?"

  "No," the AI said. "The vibrations will be muted."

  "Vibrations," Hoodwink said. "The hull will still vibrate."

  "That is correct," the AI confirmed.

  "Can we modify the frequencies we produce to compensate for the muting? Basically use the entire hull as a speaker?"

  "That may be possible," the AI said. "Though I will have to account for the dynamically changing structure of the hull, and the placement of the steel tentacles, and adjust in realtime."

  With the machine's help, he programmed the internal speaker system to emit a suitable frequency of sound based on the scout class signature of the satoroids.

  He plugged his ears and initiated the changes. The noise was deafening.

  Long, painful moments passed. He wasn't sure the vibrations were penetrating the hull properly. Nor was he sure that the scout identifier would even work anymore, since the satoroids had already pegged him for attack. Would they continue to crush the submersible and send him—not to mention humanity—to a shared doom?

  He removed his fingers from his ears and, flinching painfully at the noise, he retrieved the remote detonator and flicked the arming switch. He entered a time of ten seconds and rested his thumb over the green initiate button. If he had to die there, he wanted to do as much damage as he could, even if it only harmed the outskirts of the colony.