Walls of Steel (The Forever Gate Book 7) Read online

  BOOKS BY ISAAC HOOKE

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  WALLS

  OF

  STEEL

  THE FOREVER GATE

  BOOK VII

  Isaac Hooke

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, organizations, places, events and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously.

  Text copyright© Isaac Hooke 2016

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

  www.IsaacHooke.com

  Cover design by Isaac Hooke

  Cover image by Bo Benson Ray Sales

  table of contents

  one

  two

  three

  four

  five

  six

  seven

  eight

  nine

  ten

  eleven

  twelve

  thirteen

  fourteen

  fifteen

  sixteen

  epilogue

  postscript

  about the author

  acknowledgments

  one

  A series of clicks and groans awakened Graol.

  His twenty-four eyes focused on the liquid environment, taking in visual information from every direction at once, giving him three hundred and sixty degree eyesight. There wasn't much to see.

  He floated in the tight compartment of the life craft that had ejected from the mothership when it exploded. There was no room to swim anywhere. A fleshy umbilical linked him to the local life support system. A small portal near his torso provided a view of outer space beyond.

  He squeezed his torso in the Satori equivalent of a sigh. He had been enjoying a pleasant mind dream, living in a palace of coralline with a harem of tentacled females fulfilling his every desire. He had almost forgotten about the real world, and that he had ever been human. And yet, he glimpsed hints of his humanity even in the dream. Sometimes, when he would look out past the coralline walls into the bright ocean, he would remember the faces of Ari, Tanner, Stanson and the others. He would see his own reflection and remember his human name: Hoodwink. But then his favorite mate would wrap her tentacles around him in pleasurable bliss and the memories would vanish.

  The dream was undoubtedly part of the conditioning performed by the local AI, in what the Satori called Return therapy. It was supposed to help an alien quadmind forget the years of immersion spent in a human surrogate. The dream was just one part of the therapy, but a potent one. Normally it was used in the latter stages of the process, however: he could only imagine how the other surrogates involved in the mission must have felt, awakened after all those years as human beings to bodies that were entirely foreign to them. The alien dream world wouldn't have helped them in the least. One of those surrogates was a human named Jeremy, who had programmed the computer virus that had nearly destroyed the human colony ship on Ganymede. Jeremy's alien name was Javiol. He was very likely insane at the moment.

  Graol wasn't entirely certain about his own sanity. Now that he was awake, his humanity had reasserted itself stronger than ever. He had been human far too long for his sense of self to change so quickly. He didn't think he would ever truly be Satori again. He wanted to close his eyes, wanted to forget what he was, but his lidless vision organs allowed him no such luxury.

  He flexed his body, pressing against the extents of the compartment. Before he had gone into hibernation, four of his eyes had been crushed, yellow blood had seeped from his lower appendages, and his torso had bled black ink. Apparently all of those injuries had regenerated during the journey. The Satori body was remarkably resilient.

  The pops and high-pitched moans came again, transmitting directly into his quadmind. It took a moment for him to understand the meaning.

  "Nearing Earth colony."

  It could be only the local AI of the life craft. For a moment he considered overriding the nav controls: he was afraid of returning. But the time for course changes had long passed. If he had wanted to remain in orbit above Ganymede, he should have done so before entering hibernation. He couldn't simply fly back to the moon, not anymore, at least not without attracting unwanted attention. Besides, without a surrogate body, he had no means to interact with the humans. There simply was no way for him to go back.

  He reached out, searching for other quadminds. He found several. The overall sentiment seemed to be one of confusion, though there was also much fear. Most of the Satori colonists wouldn't have awakened when Graol had arranged for the destruction of the mothership. It must have come as an unpleasant surprise to be unceremoniously hauled from their dreams by the AIs only to find themselves trapped inside small life crafts on the way back to Earth. The awakening would be even worse for the lower classes, who were packed into the crafts eight at a time. Not like Graol, who had one all to himself.

  Through the portal, he watched the green and white ball of Earth grow until it consumed the view. He spotted a few small Satori vessels in orbit, but was troubled when he saw another, far larger vessel.

  It looked like a massive saucer joined to an inverted cone. Smaller rectangular sections protruded from the saucer, while canals crisscrossed the cone. At the bottom tip, pipes of varying heights vented black mist.

  That ship hadn't been there two hundred years ago. The Satori had been busy: they'd built another mothership. Had the pod decided to move on to a different part of the galaxy already, in search of a new species to extinguish? If so, they would undoubtedly swing past Ganymede to finish the last remnants of humanity.

  The outside was swallowed in bright orange as the craft began reentry. Graol was momentarily jostled about in the liquid. Then the portal cleared and he was through.

  The craft approached one of the greenish-tinged oceans. The surface came up faster than he expected, and when the vehicle struck, his body was jerked about as the inertial compensators struggled to absorb the blow.

  The outside quickly became dark. Several moments passed. He perceived only the tight, mostly featureless confines of the craft around him, dimly lit by the algal glow of his own body. The portal remained a black hole in the side of the craft, the waiting darkness impenetrable, suffocating. Graol experienced a sudden moment of claustrophobia. He doused the fear by remembering Ari, Tanner and the others. He missed them terribly, and hoped they fared well.

  Static constellations of light began to float past in the distance. He couldn't tell if they were Satori or other alien species. Those lights momentarily faded as the craft passed through a seething cloud of blackness; when it emerged, he began to see hints of the massive structures of coralline that were around him. Slowly, the ocean outside brightened. The craft had entered a
massive underwater valley.

  He spotted pods of the Xeviathi slave class, the great iridescent gill-whales. Large, fleshy gills lined their baleen-jawed heads. Xeviathi were engineered to have no consciousness of their own. Every whale that Graol saw out there served as a surrogate, housing the consciousness of a Satori master.

  As the valley became a complex series of tunnels and caverns carved into the alien coral, Graol spotted some satoroids—robots that vaguely resembled Satori with their metallic tentacles and immobile torsos, though they possessed a spinning rotor in the place of a tail. They also could serve as surrogates, but mostly they were the direct embodiment of a central AI, termed The Shell, allowing said AI to interact with the oceanic environment. For that reason the satoroids were called the Servants of The Shell.

  Graol began to see the occasional Satori out there, pumping its pear-shaped torso in and out, flagellating its tail, rippling its cilia. Satori couldn't move very fast compared to satoroids and other slave classes, and thus wouldn't stray far from their resting caves. Graol was close to the main settlement, then. The sprawling Satori city of Laranth.

  Absent throughout all of that were any of the original seafaring species of Earth. None of the native underwater races existed anymore, of course. The Satori had ensured their extinction in the preemptive strikes of two hundred years ago, which had acidified the oceans, converting the water into an environment more suitable to Satori life. After those strikes the shores were lined with the dead bodies of whales, dolphins, sharks, squids, and the like. Vultures and other scavengers that chose to eat their flesh died, too.

  Something nudged the craft and it came to an abrupt halt. Beyond the portal, he saw moorings attach.

  A message consisting of squeals and moans was broadcast into his mind.

  Welcome home, colonists.

  two

  Graol floated in a wide coralline cave. At the front, moored in place by fleshy cords, twenty-five unconscious Satori had gathered in a half-circle, their bodies abandoned so that their psyches could link, forming that greatest of Satori evolutionary advantages: the Hivemind.

  Joined like that, they became a functional entity more equivalent to an AI in terms of sheer processing power and decision making speed. The Hiveminds were how the ancient Satori had won their civil wars when the species was still in the equivalent of the human industrial age, before the invention of AI. The greatest tacticians and strategists were Hiveminds.

  Ordinary Satori could link, too, and in fact often did. The greatest cultural and technological contributions to society had come from linked quadminds, including the invention of space travel.

  Graol regarded those motionless bodies with some trepidation. This was the highest tribunal in the ocean: the Royal Hivemind. Governing body, high court, and board of inquiry, all rolled into one. Capable of guiding the entire pod of Satori and delivering deadly judgment. With his three hundred sixty-degree vision, Graol was well aware of the fifty satoroids distributed throughout the cave: the personal guard of the Royal Hivemind, and its on-the-spot executioners.

  With Graol were the nine surviving members of the former Council from the mothership, including Thason, Bryce, and Crav. None of the others involved in the human surrogate mission, including Javiol, were present. Presumably they would be judged in turn.

  The murky water was lit only by the glow of the algae in the translucent gastric cavities of the Satori present. Tiny particles floated by, waste products from the tens of thousands who dwelled in the underwater cave system beyond.

  The Royal Hivemind deigned to transmit its thoughts then.

  You have returned empty-handed. The alien colony remains intact on the gas giant's moon. Your surrogate project was a failure. And most damning of all, you lost the primary mothership. The Vargos.

  None of the Satori responded.

  The Shell of the mothership made a final transmission before detonation. Its internal systems were compromised by a virus of some kind. That was all that was intelligible. Who would do such a thing?

  It could only be Javiol, Graol transmitted immediately. He was our greatest programmer. He was the only one of us who had been able to learn enough about the Species 87A computer system to create the virus we inserted into the AI of their ship. Species 87A was what the Satori called humans. Unfortunately, he went mad in the process. I believe he created a virus for the Vargos, too. If you haven't interrogated him yet, you will soon learn how mad he is.

  All of the Fifty Surrogates went mad, Thason said slowly. He had been the chief biomimetics officer responsible for creating the baby surrogates they had inserted into the human ship and its dream world in the first place. Even Graol's sanity is questionable. Remotely injecting one's consciousness into an alien body for a short stint of existential pleasure is one thing. But injecting it into a newborn alien, a baby immersed in an alien virtual reality, and then leaving it to live out its life in that reality? Of course they are all insane.

  Are you insane, Graol? the Hivemind asked him.

  Graol would have laughed, if he was human.

  If I was, would I even know it? Graol transmitted. And would I admit to it? Though truthfully, despite the extensive Return therapy I have undergone, I still feel more 87A now than Satori. But I would not betray my race.

  Wouldn't you? the Hivemind returned.

  He kept his quadmind calm. Maybe in small things, but never to the extent of blowing up my own ship. I couldn't. Not with all my polyp children, and my family aboard.

  Tell us of these small things? the Hivemind questioned.

  Small betrayals, Graol said. Such as wanting to live the rest of my days in an 87A surrogate.

  There was a pause. Do the councilors concur with Graol's assessment regarding Javiol? That he had the skill necessary to create the virus, and the motive to implant it: insanity?

  Yes, Bryce transmitted. It is entirely likely that Javiol was responsible for the destruction of the Vargos.

  Are there any others who had the necessary skill to create such a virus? the Hivemind asked.

  There were only two others aboard with the necessary programming skill, Bryce answered. Fhavolin, head of the council, and Graol himself.

  All quadminds seemed to turn on Graol. He shifted his cilia uncomfortably.

  The Hivemind spoke again: Tell us what happened to Fhavolin. She who did not return.

  We don't know, Crav responded. She was in hibernation like the rest of the council at the time. Perhaps her moorings malfunctioned before the explosion and failed to load her into a life craft.

  Graol was very careful to keep his thoughts blank, as he knew the answer to that question very well.

  Do you have something to add, Graol?

  He cleared his quadmind. No.

  He would have to guard his thoughts more carefully.

  There is no need for you to guard your thoughts here. You are among friends.

  Again he blanked his quadmind. I do not feel comfortable, I suppose, with having my thoughts read. I blame it on all the years I have spent inside an 87A body. But you are right. I am among friends. And I have nothing to hide.

  Do you know what happened to Fhavolin, Graol? the Hivemind pressed.

  Graol contracted his torso in a sigh. No. She was my mate, once. That is why you detected distress in my quadmind when you mentioned she did not return. Though I suspect Javiol was her mate before he was sent inside the 87A vessel. Perhaps she colluded in some way with Javiol to destroy the Vargos.

  Impossible, Bryce said. She would never betray us like that.

  Oh, I wouldn't be so sure, Thason said. He always considered her a rival, and still smarted over the fact that she had been elected to head the shipboard council, and not him. It's quite possible that she helped him. In fact, she would have had to, because Javiol would have been embedded within the 87A surrogate at the time the Vargos virus appeared. That could be why she never made it to a life craft. The Vargos AI attempted to defend itself, killing her, but was too
late.

  Another pause.

  Shell, the Hivemind transmitted to the central AI. Update us on the status of the one known as Javiol.

  The Return therapy is going well, the Shell answered. I believe he will be able to answer your questions coherently, now.

  Graol shuddered when he heard that series of pops and clicks in his mind. It sounded exactly like the AI he had contended with on the Vargos, though he knew it operated from a completely separate and independent core.

  Bring in Javiol, the Hivemind instructed the AI.

  Two satoroids left the cave. In moments the robots returned, carrying a Satori between them. His tentacles were bound to his torso by fleshy ropes. His tail had been folded up and secured under his lower appendages, preventing him from achieving any locomotion.

  Graol had never beheld Javiol in person before, and was a little surprised by what he saw. His body was small by Satori standards, as if stunted. Even his eyestalks were tiny. Those portions of his tentacles that weren't bound appeared shredded, as if he had struck repeatedly at the insides of his life craft in a futile attempt to escape.

  Remove his quadmind cap, the Hivemind said.

  That was a device that prevented a Satori from transmitting its thoughts.

  One of the satoroids detached the small metallic interference device that had been fastened to Javiol's torso.

  Because of the cap, Graol was expecting a stream of incoherent thought to emanate from Javiol, but the Satori remained quiet.

  You have learned discipline, Javiol, the Hivemind transmitted.

  Javiol answered immediately. I am Javiol 44-57-79-312, egg donor Fhavolin-2-22-65-114, sperm donors Haol-26-36-12-85 and Fallow-92-1002-4-58, mooring B7.

  Did you destroy the Vargos, Javiol? the Hivemind asked him.

  I am Javiol 44-57-79-312, egg donor...