The Last Stand (The Forever Gate Book 9) Read online

  “And that, my boy, is precisely why I brought along someone with your flying skills.” Hoodwink glanced at the overlay on his aReal. Was Clark drifting to the left?

  Hoodwink activated the squadron channel. “Clark, looks like you’re straying to port.”

  The display updated with the shuttle’s corrected trajectory.

  “Sorry about that, Hood,” Clark transmitted.

  “Stick to formation, people,” Hoodwink sent over the encrypted line. “And maintain speed at half throttle. I don’t want anyone showing any sign of hesitation. Let’s not give them any clues as to how frightened we really are.”

  Hoodwink cut the line and watched as the squadron closed with the black cloud over several minutes. Soon, that darkness completely obscured the mothership from view.

  He glanced at Zak. “It’s time for me to get back to my flyer. The autopilot can only take it so far.”

  “Good luck,” Zak said.

  Hoodwink smiled. “On a good day, I make my own luck, lad.”

  “Is today a good day?” Zak asked.

  Hoodwink’s smile wavered. “Don’t be jinxing it now.”

  He sat back in his chair, closed his eyes and thought of the code word of squeals and pops that would allow him to detach from his surrogate and return to his Satori body.

  GRAOL AWOKE TO a transmission in the Satori tongue.

  Unknown ship, identify yourself.

  He floated in a greenish liquid within what served as the cockpit of the flyer, looking out on the universe through the twenty-four eyes that granted him three hundred and sixty degrees of visual acuity. A portal offered him a view of the black fog that blotted out the stars ahead.

  The local AI aboard the flyer would have transmitted a canned response to the challenge, but apparently the mothership was not impressed, because the communique repeated.

  Unknown ship, identify yourself or you will be destroyed.

  The moans and hisses were transmitted directly into Graol’s quadmind, courtesy of the local AI, which had received the telepathic signal and boosted it.

  This is flyer Hrotissqerie 122, piloted by Graol-52-70-32-144, egg donor Laol-12-142-160-924, sperm donors Maol-16-30-42-43 and Fallow-92-1002-4-58.

  Graol waited several moments before the response came.

  According to the records, you are assigned to Earth. As is your flyer.

  Graol knew he was speaking to the Shell, the primary AI in control of the mothership, and the main representative of the ship’s local Hivemind, not to be confused with the Hivemind Graol had destroyed on Earth.

  The records are inaccurate, Graol sent. You are aware that Earth colony has ceased transmissions?

  We are aware, the response came. A minor communications glitch with the colony, no doubt. We expect contact to be fully restored shortly. Explain what this has to do with the inaccuracy in the records.

  I have been operating undercover on Ganymede, Graol returned. Collecting samples of Species 87A technology. Species 87A was the Satori designation for humans. Because of the sensitive nature of my mission, the records were purposely obfuscated to conceal my location. Ordinarily I would instruct you to contact my superiors on Earth to confirm my identity, but since communication is down, I can do no such thing.

  I must clear your approach with the Hivemind, the Shell responded.

  The Satori AI had one major weakness: it’s appetite for new technology. So Graol said: I bring you five shuttles laden with 87A weapons and equipment. They carry hitherto undiscovered technologies. I have also uncovered the 87A Hidden Archives, which contain the entire technical history of Species 87A.

  Obviously tempted, the Shell did not reply for several moments.

  Finally: Turn back. The Hivemind refuses to grant authorization for your approach at the present moment.

  But these technologies—

  Turn back or suffer the consequences, the Shell interrupted.

  It was worth a try.

  Turning back, Graol lied.

  He waited until the flyer was within two kilometers of the black fog that shielded the mothership.

  You have not turned back, the Shell sent.

  Doing so presently, Graol responded.

  The flyer closed to fifteen hundred meters.

  Graol transmitted the code that ordinarily would allow a Satori flyer to penetrate the countless nanobots that composed the black cloud. Not unexpectedly, the microscopic robots did not respond to it.

  A thousand meters.

  Graol broadcast several more overlapping frequencies; if his values were correct, the affected nanobots would vibrate in turn, retransmitting and amplifying the same frequencies to their neighbors.

  Five hundred meters.

  You have not turned back, the Shell sent.

  He doubled the signal strength. Tripled it.

  Two hundred meters.

  He knew he was successful when the black fog visibly changed form, condensing into discrete clumps as the nanobots vibrated at their resonant frequency and ceased functioning. The dark clusters spread like a disease through the cloud, as the nanobots comprising the shield deactivated en masse.

  The craft hit the outskirts of the transformed cloud. If Graol had failed, the black mass would have hardened upon impact, and his vessel would have incinerated.

  Instead, those small clumps readily yielded; it was as if simple space dust struck the forward armor of the flyer. Small pocks marred the glass as the craft penetrated, and then the shuttle was through. The self-healing glass repaired against the backdrop of the all-consuming mothership.

  The Shell would have trained the nearest turrets on his craft by then, and would begin firing shortly, Graol knew. He activated the coded sequence for evasive maneuvers, programmed in the final target for the autopilot, and then moored himself to the consciousness transference unit.

  HOODWINK OPENED HIS eyes in the cockpit of the human shuttle.

  Zak was just returning to his seat.

  “Why weren’t you at the controls?” Hoodwink asked angrily.

  “For a second there we thought you were going to betray us,” Zak said. “The cloud wasn’t changing, and the other pilots convinced me to train the laser rifle on you. If that black shield didn’t go down, we were going to turn around, and I was going to shoot you the moment you woke up.”

  Hoodwink shook his head. “If that shield hadn’t gone down, I wouldn’t have woken up! I’d be dead now.”

  The incoming fire from the mothership began. Hoodwink’s flyer began to dodge.

  Zak switched to the squadron line: “Initiate evasive maneuvers. Follow Hoodwink’s flyer in.”

  The shuttles maintained their formation; the pilots did an excellent job of mirroring the movements of Hoodwink’s flyer, keeping it directly in front of them.

  No alien flyers intercepted them, of course: the Satori battle protocol relied entirely upon point defenses.

  Those plasma blasts didn’t let up; one of them sheared right through the shuttle that escorted them on the port side. The twin halves of the craft disintegrated into so much space debris.

  Good-bye, Clark.

  “Steady, people,” Hoodwink said. “Stay tight.”

  With the nanobot shield behind them, the mothership before them looked like a colossal saucer joined to an inverted cone. Smaller rectangular sections protruded from the top of the saucer, while canals crisscrossed the cone. At the bottom tip were the pipes of varying heights that had vented the nanobots. Nothing emerged from those latter structures at the moment.

  The shuttles were so close that the mothership consumed nearly the entire field of view in front of them. The lead shuttle, and Hoodwink’s flyer beyond that, were nearly lost to the immensity of it all.

  Hoodwink’s flyer flew toward the saucer section. Up ahead, the two closest turrets continued to unleash streams of plasma at the squadron, making it impossible to land on the alien hull.

  “What the hell is Stanson doing?” Hoodwink exclaimed.
r />   Once the shields were down, the human ship was supposed to fire at the alien mothership from the surface of Ganymede and disable those two key turrets. However, it seemed the attacks from the human ship had ceased entirely.

  Hoodwink sent a broadcast to the Hercules vessel on the surface. “Stanson, take out the turrets goddammit!”

  The communications lag should have only been a couple of seconds at that distance, but Stanson didn’t respond.

  “Stanson?” Hoodwink tried again.

  Finally the Control Room operator responded: “We’re trying.”

  “Well try harder! We’re getting eaten alive up here!” Hoodwink angrily cut the comm.

  Zak deftly maneuvered after the lead shuttle. A plasma bolt tore past overhead, narrowly missing. Some debris broke away from Hoodwink’s flyer.

  “I think that one scraped the roof of your flyer,” Zak said.

  “Let’s try the X2s,” Hoodwink told the pilot. He switched to the squadron channel. “Shuttles, prepare to fire lasers.”

  Zak prepped the shuttle’s onboard lasers. The autopilot aboard Hoodwink’s flyer was programmed to make as many passes as necessary over that region of the alien hull. Only when the turrets ceased firing would it attempt a descent.

  On the next pass, Hoodwink watched the first turret approach.

  “Hold,” he transmitted. “Fire on my command. We all target the same area. Zak, share your targeting data.”

  Five hundred meters to the turret.

  “Hold.”

  Two hundred meters.

  “Hold.”

  Fifty.

  “Fire.”

  Zak and the other pilots unleashed their lasers at the turret in unison.

  “Direct hit,” Zak said. “No obvious damage.”

  A flash came from their left and Raynor’s shuttle disintegrated.

  Hoodwink hailed the Control Room on the surface below. “Stanson? Goddammit!”

  Stanson’s answer came a few seconds later: “Looks like Kade disabled half our defensive weapons with his most recent patch. Either accidentally, or intentionally, we’re not sure which. The ones facing the turrets in question are currently inoperable, and I’m not able to override the change.”

  “What?” Hoodwink couldn’t believe it. “Thanks for informing me of this now!”

  Stanson replied: “We didn’t notice the problem earlier because the countermeasures were able to pick up the slack... apparently the automated systems launched mortars to act as chaff, a last resort action that protected our ship against most of the incoming fire. Additionally, the weapon alarms weren’t functioning, so basically it was the perfect storm down here in terms of fog of war. I’m sorry, Hood.”

  “Don’t I’m sorry me, you bastard!” Hoodwink returned. “Those excuses make no sense! Get those weapons online! Kade did this, you said? I thought Tanner was supposed to have captured Kade by now.”

  “Tanner is almost at his location, yes,” Stanson transmitted.

  “Tell him to hurry! Because if you don’t take out those turrets soon, there won’t be any shuttles left up here!”

  three

  Tanner retrieved two security personnel, Lana and Craig, from the berthing area and he made his way down to deck four. Lana had a crossbow-shaped blaster—apparently she’d built one using schematics from the archives, a few 3D-printed parts, and the help of the trainer AIs. Unfortunately Lana had neglected to tell anyone about the weapon, so she was the only other person aboard with a blaster, after Tanner. As it was an illegal weapon, Tanner almost confiscated the thing from her, but decided he could use another armed individual in his party.

  As he proceeded through the corridors, he realized Hoodwink had been right about the robot patrols: they had definitely decreased. The maintenance robots were likely being called away to repair the ongoing damage to the hull.

  Tanner noticed that the rumbles signifying the alien attacks had ceased shortly after Hoodwink departed with the shuttles. He hoped that was a good sign of their impending success.

  Blaster in hand, he reached compartment 4-77-3-Q, one of the fiber hubs on deck four. All terminals from the immediate subsection connected through that hub. Kade resided either inside 4-77-3-Q itself, or within one of the nearby compartments.

  Tanner quietly opened up 4-77-3-Q and had a look inside. There was no one hiding among the server farms, routers, and optical cables.

  The radio built into his aReal activated. It was Stanson. “Tanner, what’s your status?”

  “I’m at 4-77-3-Q,” Tanner said softly. “Should have Kade in custody shortly. I’ll keep you apprised.”

  “All right, but hurry,” Stanson returned. “We’ve already lost three Keepers. The battle can’t be going well on the Inside.”

  Tanner made his way to the hatch on the far side of the room and entered the access code.

  When he opened it, he spotted a young man with his back to him. It had to be Pots—no one else had that thick, vibrant red hair. He was operating a terminal via an aReal headset.

  Pots either sensed his presence, or more likely he had rigged the aReal to issue an alert if the hatch opened, because Pots abruptly spun around. When he saw Tanner pointing the blaster at him, the freckle-faced youth raised his hands.

  “Take off the aReal and step away from the terminal,” Tanner instructed him.

  Pots removed the headset and stood up.

  Tanner fully entered the compartment, followed by Lana and Craig.

  Beside the terminal Tanner spotted Kade, Brown, and an older man and woman he didn’t recognize. All four were unconscious, tethered via umbilicals to the terminal.

  Lana and Craig subdued Pots, tying his wrists behind his back and then patting him down. They made him sit on the deck nearby.

  Tanner went to the terminal, exchanged his headset for the one Pots had been using, and used the Child’s access controls to waken the four dreamers one at a time. Lana and Craig disconnected the umbilicals from the surprised individuals in turn and bound them, setting them on the floor beside Pots.

  When they were all awake, Tanner addressed Kade. “Who are these two?” He nodded at the man and the woman. The aReal labeled them as crew members “17598” and “25431.”

  “Does it matter?” Kade answered.

  “Not really. But I suspect they’re two dreamers you pulled out without permission. Especially considering that my aReal tells me they’re currently sleeping in pods on decks three and seven at this very moment. Yet another hack on your part, no doubt.”

  Kade shrugged.

  Tanner sent Stanson a message. “I’ve secured Kade, Brown and Pots. There are also a pair of ride-alongs Kade apparently awakened illegally.”

  “Got something urgent for you to work on,” Stanson returned. “Hoodwink is having some trouble. Apparently Kade disabled half our defensive weapons, so we can’t eliminate the necessary turrets on the mothership.”

  Tanner’s eyes bulged in outrage. “What? The fool.”

  “It’s imperative that you get him to rollback whatever changes he put into the system to cause that,” Stanson continued.

  “I’m on it.”

  Via the aReal, Tanner pulled up the recent code changes made to the system. Nothing was obscured or obfuscated—Pots’ access privileges ensured that. Since he had all the privileges he needed again, Tanner instructed the AI to rollback all changes made in the past week and then to issue a hot-reload. He was relieved when the AI told him the rollback had successfully deployed.

  “Did that work?” he transmitted to Stanson.

  “No,” Stanson returned. “Although, it seems the robots are abandoning their guard positions around the inhabited portions of the ship. The relearning center, the berthing area... it looks like we’re no longer prisoners on our own ship. So you fixed that. But we still need those weapons online.”

  Tanner nodded. That meant Pots wasn’t the one who had made the change. He needed to try a user account with different access privileges: Kade
’s.

  He placed Pots’ aReal back down on the terminal and donned his own.

  “Kade,” Tanner said. “Give me your access code.”

  Kade didn’t answer.

  “You or one of your loyal followers disabled half the defensive weapons in your last patch,” Tanner told him. “If I don’t rollback those changes, all of us are going to die.”

  Kade kept his mouth shut.

  “Did you disable half our point-defense weapons on purpose or something?” Tanner asked him. “Is that what you want, for all of us to die? We can’t fight back against the Satori without them.”

  Brown glanced nervously at Kade. “You never said you disabled the external weapon systems.”

  Pots seemed just as worried. “Kade. Is Tanner telling the truth?”

  Kade still didn’t answer.

  Tanner trained the blaster toward the group. “Let’s find out how valuable your co-conspirators are to you. Should I kill Brown? Or how about Pots? What about this man.” Tanner aimed his weapon at each prisoner in turn. He kept an eye on Kade, watching for any reaction, but the man appeared completely impassive and unperturbed. “The woman?”

  When Tanner pointed the weapon at her, he thought he saw a momentary flash of fear in those eyes.

  “The woman, then.” Tanner took a step toward her. “You don’t help me, I’m going to start by blasting away her feet. One toe at a time. Then I’ll move on to her hands. Then her arms. Her legs. And finally, if you still won’t help me, and she hasn’t bled to death, I’ll concentrate on her torso. Basically I’ll keep blasting until she dies. What do you think of that?”

  Kade bared his teeth in a smile. “Go ahead. I know you won’t do it, Tanner. You don’t have it in you.”

  Tanner cocked his head, and then he stepped forward angrily. “Hold her.”

  Lana and Craig pinned the bound woman, and Tanner held the weapon to the tip of her boot.

  “We’ll start with her big toe.” Tanner slid his finger over the trigger.

  “Okay okay!” Kade said.

  Tanner immediately withdrew his finger and glanced at Kade. “That was quick.”