by Isaac Hooke
"Where are you tethered?" Tanner asked him.
"I found a terminal in an abandoned cargo bay," Hoodwink said. "It's cozy, but it's got air. And an alarm to wake me in case of trouble."
"How did you get through the external airlock?" Tanner pressed.
Hoodwink shrugged. "My command codes still opened the hatch."
Ari glanced at Tanner. "I ordered his codes left unchanged, remember?"
"Oh yeah," Tanner said. "I still think that was a potential security breach."
"If we changed them, Hoodwink wouldn't be here right now," Ari said. "He'd be trapped outside, wasting precious oxygen in his spacesuit. Maybe dying."
"If he had a spacesuit then he had a radio, too," Tanner said. "And the Children would have let him in."
"Not necessarily. The radio signal might not have passed through the hull."
"It would have," Tanner insisted.
Hoodwink grinned. "I see you two are getting along wonderfully, as usual." He paused, then abruptly started to chortle uncontrollably.
"Our argument wasn't that funny, dad..." Ari said.
Hoodwink finally contained his laughter. "No no, you're right, it wasn't. But I tell you, I did the funniest thing while I was away."
Ari felt her brows furrow. "What?"
"I freed Earth."
Ari's confusion deepened. "What do you mean?"
"Exactly that. The Satori no longer rule the planet. They roam the oceans of the Earth, leaderless, weaponless. Human beings, the small batches of them left anyway, are now free to control their destiny once more."
"Well that's great!" Ari hugged him once more. "So when can we expect help to arrive?"
"Err," Hoodwink said. "Humanity's resources are somewhat depleted at the moment. Especially their space-faring technology. In fact, I'm not sure they have any at the moment. The only human flyers I saw were atmosphere-limited. But that's all right. I still have my handy Satori flyer. I can bring one or two of you back to Earth with me sometime. We'll meet with the survivors and come up with a rescue plan. And I can work on my Satori-human peace treaty."
"A peace treaty with the aliens?" Tanner said. "Is that even possible? I thought the Satori wanted to exterminate us all? Their religion demands it."
"Well, yes," Hoodwink said. "There is that tiny issue. But religions have been known to be flexible—many a believer has renounced his religion if only to save his or her own skin!"
"Is that the human in you talking, Hoodwink, or the Satori?" Tanner asked.
Hoodwink looked down. "The human," he admitted.
"So what are the chances of the Satori renouncing their religion?"
"Probably quite slim," Hoodwink said. "That said, there's no reason why they wouldn't sign a treaty of peace. If it ensured their survival, they would defer their religious requirements for the moment."
"Still sounds like we'd be setting ourselves up for a war in the long run."
Hoodwink's eyes glowed with zeal. "But can you imagine what both races could achieve by working together until then? We would form an amazing symbiotic civilization whose contributions to the arts and sciences would be peerless! No one would match us, not anywhere in the galaxy. Technology would advance at a phenomenal rate. Change would be inexorable, and with it would come tolerance, and finally everlasting peace."
Ari and Tanner exchanged worried looks.
"I guess I'm the only one who sees it," Hoodwink said.
"Apparently," Ari agreed.
"Well," Hoodwink said. "In any case, there are more immediate problems that demand our attention. Such as, well, the small fact that there's a Satori mothership in orbit around Ganymede once again."
Ari blinked, stunned. "What? Already?"
"You don't know? Your Children should have alerted you by now."
"They haven't." Ari glanced at Renna.
The Keeper shrugged anxiously. "This is the first I've heard of it."
"When did they arrive?" Ari asked Hoodwink.
"A few hours before me," he answered.
"Please tell me you came in a ship that could match theirs," Ari said.
"Unfortunately, no," Hoodwink admitted. "Mine is a mere mosquito in comparison. Though a fast one, mind—it can readily match their speed in deep space. It's just lacking in the firepower department. The Satori have been building that mothership of theirs for the past two hundred years, so you can expect it to pack a wee bit more of a punch."
"And the inevitable bombardments from that mothership?" Ari asked.
"Have already begun," Hoodwink said. "And unfortunately, if we don't handle that ship, when they're done blasting us to smithereens they'll probably return to the Earth and reconquer the planet."
"Hoodwink, you could have told us this sooner," Ari said.
Hoodwink sighed. "Time passes faster on the Inside. The few minutes we've talked here have only been seconds on the Outside. I figured we had lots of time to reacquaint ourselves before I shared the bad news. Besides, I thought you were already on top of it."
She glanced at Tanner. "If we haven't heard from the Children yet, something must be wrong."
"Maybe the courier they sent had trouble finding us?" Tanner said. "There are many pockets of lightning wielders in Red Mesa, yet."
"It's possible the courier was attacked, yes," Renna nodded. "Either that, or one of those bombardments Hoodwink spoke of has destroyed the Control Room."
"I hope not," Ari said.
"Well, if they did strike it, then you and I are lucky to be alive, Renna." Tanner and she were tethered via the Control Room, while Ari had gone inside from the relearning center.
Tanner retrieved his handmirror.
"Tanner, now isn't the time to admire your roguish good looks," Hoodwink said.
"Funny," Tanner replied. "See you on the Outside." He vanished a moment later.
"He's getting good at that," Hoodwink told Ari.
"He is." Ari had her own mirror out. "I'm happy you're back, Hoodwink. Very very happy."
"As am I, dear Ari." Hoodwink glanced at her mirror. "I'll see you up top once I find a mirror of my own."
"This is actually for you," Ari said, handing him the mirror. "I can't get out."
"What?"
"It's a long story, but basically we think there's a rogue in our midst. He calls himself Amoch. He's hacked the codebase, and with the help of one of his followers he inserted an item into my inventory that prevents me from leaving the Inside. Not even Tanner or any of the Children can pull me out from the Outside."
Hoodwink shook his head and said in a scolding tone: "Rogue Children? Wars on the Inside? Someone hacking the codebase? And now the Satori have returned."
"I know," Ari said. "While we were busy fighting amongst ourselves, the real enemy crept up on us."
Hoodwink regarded the mirror uncertainly. "I don't want to leave your side."
"Go back," Ari told him. "Get to the Control Room and help Tanner. They're going to need any advice you have on dealing with that mothership." She told him the location of the Control Room.
"It'll be fun getting there," Hoodwink said. "The robots have turned on us again."
Ari couldn't believe it. "What?"
"Yes. Any machine I encounter out there says 'proceed to cargo bay seven' and if I don't obey it tries to snatch me up. I was attacked three times in the passages before I found shelter in cargo bay four. It was a good thing I had a blaster, or I doubt I would have been able to escape the things."
"It must be Amoch's doing," Ari said.
"I don't know what he hopes to achieve by all of this," Hoodwink said. "Unless he is some Satori surrogate who failed to awaken when I blew up the original mothership. It's possible, I suppose, that his consciousness permanently transferred into the human body somehow, but I doubt it."
"Whatever the case, he has to be stopped." Ari chewed her upper lip. "I wonder why the robots wanted you to go to cargo bay seven?"
Hoodwink shrugged. "They're likely herding any huma
ns they find roaming the corridors to that bay. I considered going there to check it out for myself, mind, but it felt like too much of a trap to me. I was worried they'd converted the compartment into a meat grinder or something. Finding you was my highest priority... as soon as I logged in, the AI told me you were located three decks below in a place called the relearning center, but you were currently on the Inside in the city of Red Mesa. It didn't give me your exact location in the city, nor Tanner's. I considered contacting Stanson, but I wasn't sure he'd be happy to hear from me: I didn't leave him on all that good terms last time, if you'll recall. Besides, if the AI didn't know where you were, I doubted he would. So I injected into Red Mesa to begin my search, and here I am."
"Thank you for coming." Ari leaned a hand on his arm.
"And now you want me to go back," Hoodwink said bitterly. He sighed. "But I suppose you're right, they need me up there. All right, let's say I go. What are you going to do in the meantime?"
"This city needs some cleaning up," Ari told him. "There are still pockets of enemy fighters out there. Once things quiet down, I'll try to ferret out the location of Amoch."
"He'll be in the body of a gol, won't he?" Hoodwink asked.
Ari nodded.
"So if you can kill him here," Hoodwink said. "You'll kill him in the real world."
"Unfortunately I'm not so sure how easy that's going to be," Ari said. "I met one of his... associates, already. She called herself Wraylor, and claimed she was his wife. She seemed to have the powers of One."
"One?" Hoodwink said. "Then you better stay far away from this Amoch when you find him. At least until we find a way to defeat him."
She rested a hand on Hoodwink's arm. "Don't worry, Dad. I don't plan on getting myself killed."
"We never plan such a thing," Hoodwink said. "But sometimes things happen that we don't expect, they do. Look at what transpired before I arrived. You were pinned in this square. Trapped. Surrounded on all sides. Until I came and saved the day. And you say you want to clean up this city..."
"Renna and I will be more cautious this time," Ari said.
Hoodwink glanced at Renna. His expression appeared dubious. Then he sighed. "All right, Ari. All right. It seems like whenever we're reunited, one crisis or another always drives us apart mere moments later."
She gave him a hug. "I've missed you, too, dad."
"How will I be able to find you when I want to return?" Hoodwink asked her.
Renna produced a small spherical device. "Take this, Ari."
Ari accepted the device. It was a tracker.
Hoodwink nodded. "All right. I'll come back as soon as I'm able. Be safe, Ari. Promise me you won't do anything to endanger your life."
"I can't promise that," Ari said.
"Then promise me that you'll at least think before you act," Hoodwink said.
"I have been a bit rash in the past, haven't I?" Ari said. "I've grown up a bit since then, Hoodwink. I'm aware now that my actions have hurt the people closest to me in the past. I've changed."
"I hope so," Hoodwink said, gazing into the mirror. "For my sake. And for all our sakes. You're our captain."
"But now that you've returned, I was hoping you would be our captain again," Ari said.
Hoodwink looked up from the mirror. "I'm not sure the Children would ever trust me as captain, not anymore. I'm Satori."
"They'll follow you if I tell them to," Ari insisted.
"Maybe," Hoodwink said. "But I don't want the command, anyway. I'm happy to serve you, Ari, in whatever capacity I can. Now please, go. If you don't, I'll end up talking to you all day. I'm going to sit behind this ruined cart and I'm going to disbelieve this reality."
She hugged him one last time.
"Good luck, daughter," Hoodwink said.
Ari didn't trust herself to answer. The rugged way he said the words told of the emotion that he masked, and it choked her up inside.
Hoodwink sat down behind the cart and stared at his reflection as if intending to disbelieve reality.
Ari and Renna picked their way through the rubble of the square. Ari finally allowed a few tears to spill, but she quickly wiped them, ashamed at her weakness. Hoodwink hadn't cried, after all.
Halfway to a side street, Ari paused, glancing back. She caught Hoodwink staring at her in the mirror. He quickly tilted it to the side. She could swear his cheeks were wet.
Ari continuing on her way and wiped away another tear.
Good luck to you, too, dad. Good luck to us all.
34
Tanner opened his eyes. Almost all of the Children were still tethered, lying unconscious beside their terminals. Stanson wasn't at his station. Odd.
Tanner removed the tether lock from his torso and stood up to search the room. Three other terminals were unmanned.
Someone moaned on the far side of the room. Tanner squeezed past the desks and found Stanson lying on the deck. The young man was holding his head. A big red welt marred his forehead.
"Stanson!" Tanner knelt beside him. "Are you all right? What happened?"
Stanson blinked hard. "It was Kade."
"Kade attacked you?"
"Yes," Stanson said. "He and two other Children. Everyone else was Inside, except me. Dealing with the aftermath of the latest attack on the Inside. I was coordinating everyone, watching for hotspots of activity, directing the couriers as needed, when Kade attacked me. He struck me repeatedly with a bat of some kind, and then Pots and Brown dragged me to the corner while Kade took over my console. I don't know what he did, but he obviously used my elevated access privileges to install something he shouldn't have. When he left, from my position here on the deck I ordered the AI to pull out the other Keepers, but it refused. Kade obviously changed my access. I have read-only privileges and can't issue commands anymore."
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 f
ar 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."
35
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.
