Ryk E. Spoor's Blog, page 32

Challenges of the Deeps: Chapter 18

Oh, you didn't think I'd just continue the LAST scene, did you? There's other characters to see!

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Chapter 18.

     "The idea is tempting, Doctor DuQuesne, but ... are you certain it will work?"

"Not certain. But... say eighty percent chance it'll work," DuQuesne answered. "And if it does work, your firepower just went way up."

"It will drop if you fail, however," Orphan pointed out. DuQuesne could tell that the protest was, at least partially, purely from Orphan's instinctive need to be cautious.

"You'll still have the top turret that Simon modified in the first place," Ariane said. "And from what I saw of that thing in action, you could lose a lot of turrets and still be ahead of where your ship started."

A buzzing chuckle accompanied by a handtap was Orphan's reply. "You indeed have a point, especially since that weapon no longer requires someone to stand in the turret reloading it. And having another such weapon... or three... yes, that is definitely a gamble worth taking."

"Three? You wouldn't want all of them converted?"

"Alas, I do not have nearly enough channel assembly reloads to reasonably make use of that many. But up to three, yes, I have the supplies to make useful."

"Okay, then we'll get to it. On one condition."

"That is…?"

"You don't watch. If I'm right, and I've got the secret, I'm not giving it away. Giving you a SAMPLE, yes, but not the technique."

The green and black alien chuckled again. "Doctor, I have gone over the one Doctor Sandrisson created many times, and failed to find the secret. If you have that secret, then it is your Faction's by right. The gain of such weaponry will be more than adequate to salve the complaints of my curiosity."

DuQuesne grinned. "Okay, then. C'mon, Ariane, I'll need your help."

Ariane looked puzzled, but nodded. Wu turned to follow them. "Hold off, Wu."

True to his training and promise, the Monkey King looked at Ariane. "Do you want me to come?"

"If I'm not safe with DuQuesne, I'm not safe period. If he doesn't want you there, he'll have a reason."

"All right. But I will be even more bored then."

"I have an idea, Wu Kung," Orphan said. "While I now know you were... oh, what was that term I heard one of you humans use... sandbagging, that was it! I know you were sandbagging during our little match, I think some sparring, and perhaps discussion of combat traditions of each others' civilizations, could reduce your boredom."

"Ha!" said Wu, his tail coming up with more interest. "You have a good idea there! All right, while DuQuesne and Ariane waste their time with machines, we will have some fun!"

"Just don't have too much fun, Wu," Ariane said with the smile that often showed up when Wu Kung was around. "We need Orphan in one piece."

"Yes, please; I like keeping my limbs intact," agreed Orphan.

"No dismembering, agreed," Wu said with a grin. "But a warning: I think you were sandbagging a little too."

DuQuesne saw Ariane's eyebrows go up. "Really?"

Orphan looked, somehow, too casually innocent as Wu Kung replied, "Not much, maybe, but he's the tricky type. I didn't find out until years later how much Sha Wujing was holding back, and Orphan's like him. Only with a better sense of humor!"

"That's not hard to manage," DuQuesne said, remembering the grim gray river-ogre from Wu's home Hyperion world. "Okay, guys, we'll see you later." DuQuesne led the way towards the main starboard battery.

"All right, Marc, can you tell me what my role in this is? I know you're testing to see if you can do what Simon did, but –"

"Wait." DuQuesne took out a handheld scanner and observed its responses carefully; then he set it to give an alarm if anything changed and returned it to his pocket. "Sorry, wanted to double-check that Orphan wasn't monitoring us. Yes, I probably don't need help to do this. But no reason to tell him that. He knows Simon did it... somehow. He also knows he can't figure out how. So if this time it's two of us (and it works), he'll have even fewer good clues to go on. As far as I know, aside from the Holy Grail crew, Nyanthus, Mandallon, and Gona-Brashind are the only ones who know what happened at the ritual that sealed your powers, and thus the only ones with even a chance to guess that there's something strange about Simon. Without that, he'll be shooting in the dark."

"I feel kind of guilty for working so hard to hide things from him," Ariane said.

DuQuesne reached the door, unsealed it, let Ariane enter first and then closed and dogged the hatch down again. "So do I – a little. But friend or not, that joker's always got his own agenda in mind, and he's got us in trouble before. So I don't feel that guilty."

Ariane looked up and an expression of momentary awe flickered across her face. "Wow. That's a big gun."

"It is that. Even without these mods, it's nothing you would want to mess with. Shooting hundreds of kilometers through sea-level thick amosphere, that's not a popgun by anyone's standards."

"So – being a devil's advocate here – why are we going to just give Orphan these super-guns?"

DuQuesne nodded in appreciation. "That is the question. And I'll bet you can answer it yourself, Captain."

The blue-haired woman nodded, watching as he started to take the cover plates off the energy cannon. "Well, first, we're on board and could end up in a fight, so it's just covering our own bets to make sure he's got the best equipment."

"Sure a good point," DuQuesne agreed. He concentrated, thinking back. Me and Richard... working on the Dauntless before launch... "Go on."

"Hmmm... well, he'll owe us something. Something pretty big, since he couldn't get this anywhere else. And keeping an ace in the hole like this is something that's second nature to him; he's not going to blow the secret for us."

"You've got it. Most of it, anyway." Simon routed these power leads here, then... oh, yeah, now I see it! The modifications suddenly made sense to DuQuesne, were clear and straightforward. He began working faster, feeling himself getting into the flow.

With an abrupt shock, he realized Ariane had been addressing him, with increasing concern. "DuQuesne! Can you even hear me?"

"What? Sorry, Ariane, I got really immersed there."

"Scared me a little; your hands were flying, and before you looked like you weren't even quite sure what you were doing."

"I wasn't," he admitted. "Then all of a sudden it just clicked. What'd I miss?"

"Not much, really. I just asked you what the rest of it was."

"It? Oh, why we're giving these to Orphan." He adjusted another setting, tested the connections. "Simple: I want to keep him in debt to us. The one thing he's scrupulous about is keeping his word and paying his debts; that's something everyone in the Arena cares about. So as long as he knows he owes us, we're not just relying on his sense of friendship, but on his sense of ... well, honor, I guess."

"I wish I could let my idealistic side argue, but I remember the way he helped Amas-Garao get me in the ring. Good work, 'Blackie'."

He chuckled. Somehow, having someone use that old, old nickname while he was there with his arms buried in a starship's guts... somehow it felt like home. Is there an afterlife for AIs? I hope so, Rich, because I really feel like you're watching me, somehow. "Thank you, Captain."

"No problem. On the subject of 'he's gotten us in trouble before'... what do you think about the condition he couldn't tell us?"

"You mean the other part of his bargain with this Vindatri?" He frowned, arranging his thoughts. "Well, first, no point in trying to pry it out of him. Obviously he gave his word not to tell, and we're relying on that characteristic of Orphan's nature."

"Agreed. Any guesses?"

Hmm. Yeah, these go... here. "A few. You know I can read even alien body language pretty well – which fits with our other deductions. And... you're right. I think it's potential trouble. No hostile vibes from him, but he showed just a touch too much tension in his stance. Not as bad as the time before he set Gabrielle up, but not good."

Ariane was silent for a few moments as he worked. Then, "So... is there anything we should be doing to prepare for ... whatever it is?"

"Damned if I know. I know there's something he didn't say, that he knows we'd really want to know. What, exactly? Not even a guess. On the other hand, we've got a massive trump card that – even if he somehow figured it out – he'd have a hell of a time countering."

"Orphan might have a hard time countering it, but what about Vindatri?"

"That is the question of the hour, and I hate to say it but I haven't got a clue. Orphan doesn't know who or what Vindatri is, he's in debt to the guy, and he's scared to death of him, too."

He could see her stiffen. "He is?"

"Not a doubt about it. He wasn't just creeped out from the meeting; he was still scared to this day. Not all that surprising – Orphan's the kind of guy who wants to have a handle on everything, and Vindatri obviously was out of his league in pretty much every direction." DuQuesne thought about it a while, inserting new circuitry into the control ring. "But honestly? Unless this guy's one of the Voidbuilders themselves, and I kinda doubt it, I think our ace is still good insurance."

Ariane paced slowly around the turret, her path marked by the clicking of her boots on the deck. "But that story still creeped you out, too. Why?"

He paused, looked up. For a moment he couldn't speak; habits of silence decades old still had a hold on him, even in Ariane's presence.

Finally he sighed and sat back. "Hyperion again."

"I guessed that much. It echoed something that happened to you there?"

"Yeah. Our first encounter with Mentor, actually. Not your Mentor, of course."

Not for the first time, a tiny voice in the back of his head asked Are you sure? Ariane's AIsage sure sounded like the one DuQuesne had known. He could have escaped, somehow. It'd explain why he was able to track down other escaped Hyperion AIs once the possibility was raised. Crippled, of course – he's in a T-5 housing now, not a T-10+ like the ... well, the original Mentor.

Aloud, he continued, "We needed support for the fledgling interstellar community we were setting up, and we already knew we were up against some kind of hostile interstellar power, one that already had agents on Earth even before we got the Skylark off the ground. One of those agents was the one that hurt the original Oasis so bad that K had to transfer her consciousness gestalt into her own body."

"Fairchild, right?"

"Doctor Alexander Fairchild, yes. And I hope to God he isn't the AI that escaped... not that any of the major bad guy AIs would be a picnic. Anyway, the way we ended up meeting Mentor was by following clues to a particular location in space and, well, getting drawn in just like that. And met Mentor in pretty much the same way, him choosing to manifest an appearance appropriate to each of us."

Ariane – who had actually read the originals he was based on, unlike about ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent of humanity – nodded slowly. There was a faint smile on her face. "So you weren't just a sort of Seaton-Crane cross. You were... what, Virgil Samms, too?"

He blushed. "Sort of. Kimball Kinnison, too. Not quite the model of perfection Samms was. Put me and Rich together for that. And yeah, put both series in a Mixmaster and fast-forward for the plot. Anyway, that's why it creeped me out; sounded waaaay too familiar, and I know this is the real world."

She took his hand and squeezed it. "I can't blame you, Marc. It creeped me out too, and I sure wasn't in Hyperion."

He nodded, squeezed back, and then straightened up, started working on the next section.

"Marc," she said after a moment, "that subject reminds me of our 'trump card'."

"Not surprised. What's on your mind?"

"Well... speaking as the Captain and Leader, I'd like to know... how sure are you of it working, and to what extent?"

Wondered when she'd ask those questions. And when I'd have to let myself think about them again. I'd shoved them way to the back for damn good reason. But she's also got a damned good reason for asking. "Given what we saw with Wu, I think we've got a hundred percent guarantee of something. As to the extent... that's the sixty-four dollar question." He checked his sensor again, then sighed. "Okay. Ariane, you've pretty much backed me into a corner here, so we've got a mini-crisis on our hands."

She blinked. "A crisis? Of what?"

"Of secrets and leverage, basically. See, this Vindatri – he could make something that trumped the Shadeweavers' powers, do other things that creeped out even our favorite opportunist Orphan. So I have to assume he could do a lot of the same things the Shadeweavers could."

She nodded after a moment. "Okay, I follow, and I think you're right. He told Orphan that device would work to protect him against either Faction, so we can take it as a give that he understands their powers very well, and can probably use at least some of them. What's the crisis?"

"Once I really started to think we Hyperions might be able to use our Hyperion-world capabilities, I did a few quick tests. And the answer was yes. They worked. The powers of the mind that I got from my Smithian mash-up Hyperion-verse? Working. Telepathy, perception, the whole nine yards." He gestured to the energy cannon. "This is just another demonstration – the wonky physics and technology tricks that shouldn't work, do. For me, anyway. And apparently for Simon, maybe for a different reason though."

She was staring at him in awe. "They really work?"

"Yeah. Don't know their limits – how much can the Arena give me? How much does it want to give me? What can people like this Vindatri do? Not a clue. But that's not the key point here. The point is that with those abilities I of course got the capability to wall off that knowledge. I know it's there, but even that is shielded. A Shadeweaver – or this Vindatri, or the Faith if they ever tried – would have to force his way in. It's not like that trick the Hyperion designers came up with; I'm pretty sure that once they recognize that trick exists, the Shadeweavers could find a way around what amounts to a mental checksum, and Amas-Garao sure throught so too. But these things... they're genuine mental shields, complete with surface thoughts that hide what's there."

Ariane suddenly closed her eyes and smacked herself on the forehead. "Duh! Pushing you like this, and getting the information from you, means I am now going to be thinking about it. And that makes me a potential security risk."

"Basically, yeah. Problem is that while the Shadeweavers promised not to mess with our heads, this Vindatri sure didn't. A trump card isn't much of a trump card if the other people can see it."

"And," Ariane went on, "if you weren't hiding it from yourself most of the time, you might give it away in your behavior. Right?"

"You can bet those legendary ninety-seven rows of little green apple trees on it, especially when you're dealing with Big Time Operators like Orphan or this Vindatri."

Ariane stood there for a few moments, obviously thinking, and he saw her grow a shade paler. Her eyes met his again. "And now that I know the potential extent of your – and Wu Kung's – abilities, I am the big security risk. It was bad enough before that I had suspicions, but with you confirming it –"

"About the size of it. Yes."

"Then…" she hesitated, and he wasn't surprised. I'd damn well hesitate before suggesting what I think she's going to. "Then could you... do something to either make me forget, or shield any thoughts I might have?"

"If I'm right? Yes, I can do that. If you –"

"Do it," she said sharply. "Until I know how to use the power the Faith and Shadeweavers locked up in me, I've got no defenses against beings like that messing with, or reading, my mind. We can't take the chance of someone finding out key information because I pulled it out of you and can't keep from thinking about it."

DuQuesne could see that she was absolutely certain. "Yes, Captain," he said. Arena, you damn well better be picture-perfect in making these powers work, because I am about to mess with someone else's mind.

He put down the tools, seated himself comfortably, gestured for Ariane to sit as well. "Main thing is for you to be as relaxed as possible," he said. "Had to do something like this for some of our allies like Dorothy – Rich couldn't quite bring himself to touch her head but he knew it had to be done."

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I'll try. What's it ... like? Will it hurt?"

He concentrated. Shouldn't hurt at all, he thought, projecting towards her.

"YOW! Oh my GOD that's weird! I mean... I've had stuff sort of like that in the simgames, but it's been a long time, and that's real."

"Think of it as a simgame effect, if it makes it easier," DuQuesne said. "This may be physically real, but the Arena's running the show. The show's just really convincing."

He closed his eyes and entered the surface of her mind. Ariane? I'm here again.

A sensation of nervous excitement. Yeah, I can hear that. Or think that? Vocabulary for telepathy isn't really there, you know?

     He grinned, knew she "saw" a mental representation of the smile. Yeah, I know. Now, I don't want you to forget what you knew, so I'm going to do something a little trickier; build a sort of mental camoflage around that part of your knowledge. I can't really build in a mind-barrier that'll protect you from a direct push by someone with any kind of mental power, but if he or she doesn't suspect there's something to look for, they're not going to see it.

So how will that work? If I think about our trump card –

It will use your own knowledge of the surroundings and situation to emphasize whatever other thoughts you might have. People's minds flicker from one thing to another pretty quick, and they're usually thinking at least two or three things in fast succession even when they're only conscious of thinking about one. It'll be a little disconcerting for you at first, because it'll be a little like hearing yourself talking about two things at once, but you'll get used to it. That's what I've got up around my own mind.

He started constructing the mind-block. It was something like a mirror, something like a blind, something like a false-front, but really not like any of them because it was a mental construct.

It was not, of course, possible to ignore everything about Ariane's mind while he was there – though he tried very hard to keep focused only on the task at hand. A person's mind is the only place they should be guaranteed to have privacy, and telepathy violates that. Even with permission... and dammit, I shouldn't even be getting hints of what she thinks about me or anyone else!

But he kept on, weaving a cloak of thoughts that he could implant and layer over particular concepts and knowledge in Ariane's consciousness. Got to be careful as hell here. The idea is to hide stuff, not to touch anything else.

He felt, distantly, a bead of sweat going down his back. Now I know why Rich didn't want to do this for Dorothy; too much riding on it for me, personally. And doing it here in the real world, in a world where I haven't spent years mastering these powers, where I'm just starting to think about it again – I could really mess it –

Relax, Marc. A flash of a confident smile, a warmth and absolute trust.

He was startled. You heard that.

Another flicker of humor despite tension. Marc, I almost didn't need to. I know what you're like by now, don't I? I could guess what you'd be thinking. A sensation as though she had laid a hand on his shoulder, even though neither of them had moved. You've never failed me yet, and I don't think you ever will. Trust yourself. You know what you're doing, and you're not going to mess anything up.

Her absolute confidence startled him... yet at the same time it was something he realized he had known all along. All right, Ariane. Hold on and this'll be over in a few minutes.

A weave of thought and intention, anchored to her will and the conditions around her. Connections to the secrets, connections that shielded, deflected, turned away; it was as though a part of her mind was becoming blurred, shadowed, harder and harder to see, and he placed another layer on it, and another.

Finally he sat back. "Done!" He wiped his forehead and reached into the toolbox for the bottle of water he'd brought along, drained half of it.

She rubbed her head thoughtfully. "I don't feel much different."

"That's the whole idea. Just try not to think on the subject too much; don't want to put strain on the coverup."

She looked askance at him. "You do know that's like telling someone to not think about pink elephants, right? Suddenly they're thinking about nothing but pink elephants!"

"Yeah, but better that I get to see how it acts under stress right now than find out it's falling apart the moment we meet up with Vindatri."

"A test run under stress? Okay, I get it." She blinked. "You're right, that is strange. It's... it's like being in a big empty room with one other person talking at the same time you are, the echoes bouncing around each other. I can hear... or see, or whatever... the thoughts that the people outside would get, and my hidden thoughts, too."

After a few minutes he nodded. "Seems to hold up pretty well. I can see it by scanning, but I know it's there and I know exactly what to look for. If I think about it from a surface-scan point of view I don't think anyone short of the real Mentor or another Stage Three mind – as we used to call them – would catch it unless they were already suspicious and poking hard. It's not going to protect you from a direct forceful scan, but it's good enough for now."

Ariane nodded thoughtfully but said nothing right away. He turned back to the gun and started working again.

After a while, DuQuesne became aware that she wasn't saying anything, just watching him; it was distracting for a moment, but then the silence became... companionable. She was just there watching, not intruding nor impatient. He smiled again, and let himself focus completely on the work, hearing ghosts of old conversations and banter from the lab and the ships he and Rich had shared.

Finally she did speak, and the question was an echo of questions fifty years old and more. "So, do you think that gun's going to work?"

"I'll bet on it. Ariane, I can feel it. I can see how to rework this thing to fire the way that Simon did, and how to improve on it – since Simon wasn't an engineer. Difference between a guy who had the world's best instruction manual, and another guy who knows when to ignore the manual."

"But what you're doing... really wouldn't work, right?"

"Not by the normal rules of the Arena – or back home – no. But it will work by the rules I grew up with – and we just proved that my other abilities are working here. Which means that Orphan's ship just got a lot more dangerous."

She grinned up at him. "You look happy, Marc."

Do I? I guess I do... Yeah, I do. DuQuesne looked down and smiled. "I am. This... brought back the good part of the memories, and having you here…"

Her smile faded but did not go away, her eyes were serious, no longer laughing. "There's a conversation I've always avoided with you," she said finally.

He could have misinterpreted that, but he wasn't going to let the invitation pass. "But not now?"

She shook her head. "Not this time. The two people I'm actually interested in are both my closest advisors. I'm not going to escape that problem either way."

No, I guess she won't. Technically she's designated me second in command, Simon not really in the chain of command near that level, but we've been the two she relied on most. "Does that mean you'll always have to keep a distance, or not?"

She rolled her eyes, then without warning reached up, pulled herself up by his shoulders and kissed him, open-mouthed and eager.

DuQuesne was caught completely off-guard, but he knew how to respond to that. The kiss lasted for something like forty-three years, but oddly the clock said it was only about thirty or forty seconds when she dropped her feet back to the deck. "Wow," he said, which was utterly trite, and completely inadequate, and he found at the same time there was no better word. Haven't done that since K and I separated. And for someone fifty years my junior, she's good.

She laughed and gave him another quick kiss. "No, Marc, I'm not keeping my distance. I'm betting that our friendship – yours and mine, and ours with Simon – is strong enough that we can work this through without disaster."

"And what about Simon?"

Ariane shook her head and laughed again. "Honestly, Marc, I don't know. You're both incredibly brilliant, capable, and courageous, Simon's beautiful and charming and debonair, and you're tall, dark, brooding, and angsty. And now both of you have awesome and mysterious powers, too."

"I'm not angsty!" It was surprising how much of him rebelled at the characterization. Which might just be proving her point, dammit.

"Sometimes, my favorite Hyperion, you are. You can't help it and I don't blame you. And it's kind of cute in someone as massively omnicompetent as you." Ariane kissed him again before he could recover from being called 'cute', which – as far as he could recall – was a word no one had ever used to describe him before. "But like I said, I don't know, Marc. I thought I would be a one-man woman eventually – I wasn't comfortable thinking about my parents' multi-relationship arrangement. But... maybe not. At least not when I'm presented with two such awesome people who think I am awesome, too."

He managed to finally catch up and laugh himself. "Well, you are, Ariane. If you weren't, do you think you could boss me around? And you do, no mistake."

"I do, don't I? And that's always a shock, you know. Anyway... I know you are a one-woman kind of guy, if you were raised to be a Doc Smith hero."

"Sure the way I always thought of it. But... well, I'll have to think about the whole situation." He slammed the panels shut. "But... I do love you, Ariane. I think I have since…" he grinned, "since the time you shut us all down and told us that if we called you 'Captain' you were going to be the Captain, by ninety-seven rows of the proverbial apple trees, and we had better just sit down and suck it up."

She returned the grin with a startled guffaw. "What? Well, that's not the romantic memory I would have expected."

"Oh, I liked you a hell of a lot before, but that was the point where I realized just how much you meant to me. It's only gotten worse since." He looked along the energy cannon. "Well, I think we're done here. Better tell Orphan he can do a test firing once he gets his automation rigged."

She hooked her arm into his, and he felt a weight lifting from his heart, even with all the complications he knew this would bring. "Oh, yeah, speaking of complications, which we sort of were, Captain, I should warn you, you have one other problem."

She looked up as they stepped through the hatch. "And what exactly is that?"

"Sun Wu Kung. He's kind of prone to developing attachments to the one holding his leash, and like I told you a while back, you look a lot like Sanzo."

"What? You mean... Sun Wu Kung might be— oh, for God's sake, no!"

He could not keep from laughing as the door swung shut behind them.

 

Challenges of the Deeps: Chapter 17

Simon Sandrisson had some work he was doing...

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Chapter 17.

     I am completely exhausted, Simon thought. Refitting an entire ship with the 'primary beam' weapons was not easy.

That wasn't entirely true, either. It had become easier and easier to perform the changes as he moved from turret to turret; his body moved almost of its own accord, the Arena-born knowledge and inspiration guiding his fingers as they flew across the complex interior of the energy cannons and readjusted, shifted, added, changed.

And that still frightened him; he could feel how simple it was to access that godlike knowledge, how many other things he could know, could do, that perhaps even the Shadeweavers and Faith could not.

And he was, as far as he knew, the only person with this power. With great power comes great temptation. I do not wish to prove the old saying about power corrupting, but I can understand how easily it can corrupt.

Still, he was exhausted. Superhuman understanding driving his body was still draining his physical stamina. The Embassy of Humanity loomed up before him, and with relief he stepped through the doors.

With a start, he saw that Laila Canning was already walking towards him.

"You have excellent timing, Simon," Laila said without even so much as a greeting. "We have an emergency, and both Carl and I very much want you present."

Bugger, as one of my father's friends used to say. No rest yet. "Why didn't you call me, if there was an emergency?"

Laila smiled briefly, but the smile did at least touch her eyes, light them momentarily. "Because the emergency literally just walked in the door a few minutes ago. I was going to call you if you weren't on your way down the street."

Simon sighed. "I presume it cannot wait?"

"The Leader of the Tantimorcan Faction is here, and he's already very distressed that our Leader isn't available. Took a few minutes to convince him that we were completely empowered to act – we had to play that recording of Ariane's delegating that authority to us before he would."

"All right. I guess we... wait. He's here?"

"Yes. In the second conference room. I told him we would be with him as soon as possible."

"Right." Simon sighed. "Would you by chance know what the subject of this emergency is? I would prefer not to be entirely caught unawares."

"He insisted it was something appropriate to discuss only with the Faction Leader, and judging by the way his manipulators vibrated, he wasn't exaggerating."

"Definitely wasn't," Carl said, joining them. "Glad you made it, Simon."

"I suppose I should be also. Very well, let us not keep the Leader of our fine shipwrights waiting."

The three of them reached the conference room and the door opened to admit them. Sangrey Vayhen, the Leader of the Tantimorcan Faction, immediately raised himself as a gesture of respect. He was a squat creature, something like a giant toad with a multi-eyed head and twin manipulator tendrils that split into many individual fingers sprouting from near the corners of a wide mouth.

"Leader Vayhen," Laila said, "our apologies for making you wait on what is obviously urgent business; I felt it was important to have Doctor Sandrisson here as an additional representative of the Captain's will, since you impressed on us the urgency of your problem."

"No apology needed," Sangrey answered. "Indeed, I must thank you all for seeing me so promptly." Behind the formal wording Simon could sense a huge amount of nervousness. That subliminal over-sense allowed him to read the alien's posture, scent, and motions. He's actually afraid of something.

"Now, please, tell us the problem, Leader Vayhen," Carl said.

"Ah, yes. Of course." There was a thud-click from inside the creature – a sound that he knew had to do with the way they breathed, and one that sounded very much like a nervous swallow in context. "First... I must inquire as to whether I am correct in understanding that the name 'Austin' is a line or clan designation?"

What in the world…? "It is what we would call a family name, so yes, in a way," Simon answered. "That is, in general, someone with that last name had at least one parent with that name, and will probably have other relations with that name – although not all of them will."

If anything, Vayhen looked more tense; his manipulator tendrils were stiff and moved in a jerky fashion. "Oh, dear. You see, I have to come here to both demand an apology from your faction, and possibly to present an apology as well."

Well, that is certainly a most... interesting way to present one's situation. "Sangrey," Laila said, "if the Faction of Humanity, or any of us, owe you an apology we will most certainly give you one, but we must ask you to please clarify what is going on! None of us have any idea what either of us would have to apologize for!"

"Ahh. May the mud rise above me, I am too nervous!" A vibration of color rippled up Sangrey's flanks. "It may seem strange to you, Doctor Canning, Doctor Edlund, Doctor Sandrisson... but your faction has been most terrifyingly spectacular in your arrival and success, and the thought of confronting you is most daunting to one such as myself." He raised a manipulator. "Display relevant events at Docking 5."

An image formed in midair, of a group of people – people of multiple species – on one of the docking platforms of Nexus Arena. The group was following a lone human being, and was clearly agitated, shouting angry imprecations at the human, who was retorting in multiple human languages, wearing a broad grin all the while.

"This... individual had entered into discussions with several of our people over various political events, but…" Sangrey seemed at a loss. "... but he did not discuss. That is, he seemed... intent on finding opportunities to insult people, to twist their words in dialogue, not arguing in good faith. And he continued this in a manner that was quite maddening, causing a number of our people and others to follow him, trying to shout him down or force him to be reasonable. Yet he continued."

Simon winced. Oh, Good Lord. "Sangrey, as a member of Humanity I do apologize. And I believe that all three of us apologize fully in Ariane's place."

Laila rolled her eyes. "I knew we'd get some of his type in sooner or later, but I had thought the screening that was being done would be... but no, I suspect this was not included in the original specifications. Our laws don't stop you from being deliberately rude, at least not reliably."

Simon caught a clearer fragment of dialogue and blinked in disbelief. Did he... he did. He actually said "I know you are but what am I" while taunting an alien mob! How is that even being translated?

"But I am afraid it is not over," Sangrey said, and his eyes were positively wincing.

Abruptly, the mob lunged forward. Simon remembered: on the docks, many of the Arena's usual protections against violence were relaxed or ignored entirely. There was a short struggle, and suddenly a single figure – a bipedal, human figure – fell, or was pushed, and plummeted away into the endless void below.

"We were informed, alas, that his last name was Austin, and so I was afraid that…"

Simon found himself suddenly laughing. "Oh, heavens, Sangrey, I understand. You thought your mob might have just killed off a relative of our Leader!"

Despite the nonhuman appearance, Simon could see Sangrey starting to relax. "Then we did not?"

Carl shook his head. "Ariane doesn't have that many relatives, and I know most of them. I didn't recognize that guy. See, while last names can indicate family, in most cases there's a lot of different families with the same last name. And 'Austin' is a pretty common last name in the area of the world Ariane came from. I'll check up just to be sure, but I'd bet money on that troll not being related to Ariane in any way."

The Leader of the Tantimorcan Faction relaxed even more visibly. "Troll?"

Not translated, or translated too literally? Really, the Arena seems almost arbitrary in its translation. "A term that can mean a certain sort of monster," Simon said, "but in this context means a person who derives amusement by bothering others in exactly the manner you describe, harassing them to get a response. Unfortunately our civilization doesn't do much to stop such people; at home, you can just block people from contacting you. I am afraid that does not work so well here."

While it was in the abstract sad to see anyone die, Simon found he could not summon much sorrow for the man who'd brought the violence of the mob down upon him. In truth, Simon simply found it incomprehensible that some people would take joy in making others angry and upset. And now someone had died at the hands of a mob, and the late Mr. Austin's habits had now caused a serious issue that had to be dealt with at the highest level.

"You wouldn't know this guy's first name, would you?" Carl asked.

The large toadlike creature was sagging down slightly; Simon thought this indicated relief, a relaxation after facing something terrifying. It was bemusing to think of humans as something terrifying, though. "The other name was Terry, I believe."

"I thought so!" Carl said. "This guy was notorious for this kind of stuff back home; I've actually heard of him before from Ariane, who was pissed that they shared the same last name. And you're in real luck, Sangrey; according to a quick check of the records, he didn't have any family of his own, doesn't even have anyone in the 'in case of emergency, contact' slot of the form. So there probably won't be too many people terribly broken up by the news. Maybe quite a few celebrating."

I would dearly love to leave it at that, Simon thought, but he knew he couldn't – and a glance at Laila confirmed that she was already on it. "While that is something of a relief," Laila said briskly, "your people did take the law into their own hands. I can't just ignore that."

"This is most certainly understood, Doctor Canning. It is not entirely clear what happened at the end – it may have been at least partially an accident, but it may also have been as deliberate as it seems. We do not wish this to lie between us; what can we do as recompense?"

"I presume there was an attempt to recover him?" Simon asked.

"An alarm was given and some fliers dispatched by us and others, but ... there were only some zikki found."

Simon could not keep from wincing himself. Zikki were fast-moving Arena predators, something like armored flying squid. If Mr. Austin had fallen into a group of those, well…

He took a deep breath of his own. "Leader Vayhen, would you give us a moment to confer?"

The manipulator tendrils spread wide. "Oh, certainly; do you wish me to leave?"

"No, no, just give us a few moments." The other two followed him out.

Once the door closed, he looked at them. "Technically, it's your decision, not mine."

Laila gave a dismissive sniff. "Legally perhaps, but we all know that you and DuQuesne are the ones she leans on, and she left you to give us the same backup." She flicked a glance to Carl, who nodded.

"What do you think, Simon?" Carl was clearly uncertain. "This is a sticky situation any way I look at it. I mean, that guy may have been a total asshole, but even being a world-class asshole doesn't mean you should get killed."

Simon closed his eyes and frowned. "That rather depends on location and time, Carl. In many past civilizations, being an... asshole could, and often did, carry a penalty up to and including death. I am not entirely sure that in the setting of the Arena – where offending the wrong person could lead to a war – it is not in fact completely appropriate that we look at things in that light."

"Still," Laila said thoughtfully, "we don't want to set a precedent that our people can be disposed of by mobs."

"No. But Leader Vayhen has already accepted that there is wrongdoing on his side." Simon was suddenly certain what Ariane would have done. "Laila, Carl, what do you think of this…"

After he'd explained, he saw both Carl and Laila nodding. "Works for me," Carl said. "I think it's probably the best compromise."

"I concur," Laila said. "I was thinking along similar lines; this confirms it."

"Then shall we?" The other two followed him in.

Sangrey raised himself slightly as they entered. "You have come to a decision?"

"We have, Leader Vayhen. The fact is that we, as Humanity, must accept a large part of the blame. It is imperative that we start screening all our people for such tendencies and keep those sorts at home where they won't cause trouble. We should have done so already, and this event is a result of that oversight. Laila, we can have people start on that right away, yes?"

Laila nodded. "Not a problem."

"And," Carl said, "The fact is... Showing that vid to people back home just might get through to some of those types that there's limits on what they can do. The Arena's filled with consequences, and there's nothing wrong with hammering that home."

He did work for someone who raced in a potentially lethal sport; I suppose that gives you an appreciation for the less forgiving aspects of reality. "Obviously, Sangrey, we expect you will mete out appropriate punishment to the perpetrators, by your own standards, but insofar as our official reaction? The Faction of Humanity is willing to simply let it pass, as long as the Faction of Tantimorcan is also willing to let this pass."

Sangrey squished himself low to the floor, apparently his equivalent of a bow. "The Faction of Tantimorcan accepts. May this incident be forgotten."

"May it be forgotten," the three of them chorused.

Once Sangrey had left, Simon turned to the other two. "We do have to make sure this sort of thing cannot happen again."

"No argument there," Carl said. "I found this guy's file and I can see why he was let in – he's really good at inventory management, creative, good at leading people in the right circumstances. But he is... was also really good at finding weak places in people's mental armor and pushing; it was more than a habit, it was an avocation with him."

Laila smiled – a cold smile that Simon was rather glad was not directed at him. "Then I suppose he achieved his life's goal. I would presume that we could get the AIs working on sorting out these people before they come through."

"Naturally," Simon said. "It might be as simple as looking at how many blocking lists an applicant is on. However, I think that will require some more CSF/SSC work. Restricting where people go is not normally permitted when it's not conflicting with another individual's rights. I am afraid a lot of our laws are going to have to be revised."

"I will send a summary to Thomas Cussler," Laila said. "It's really the sort of thing he should be watching for. As you say, we will have to adjust our screening, and perhaps our laws, to deal with this."

"And fast," Carl said, looking more serious. "Trolls are usually just nuisances, but there's other people who have more sinister motives, especially now. But you're right, that's Tom's and the SSC's problem; we'll send 'em our recommendation and let them figure it out. The fact someone's gotten killed should give them a good kick in the pants to move forward."

Simon stretched. "Well, now that that's settled, I want to get myself some dinner and go to sleep. I feel, as DuQuesne might say, like I have been pulled through a knothole." The others waved as he left.

However, now that he'd had to deal with another crisis, he found he wasn't yet ready to relax. Blast. Well, then, I'll go out and eat. That should work off the extra nervous energy.

The Grand Arcade was – as at almost any time – a whirl of scents, sights, and sounds uplifting, dizzying, and, in a way, comforting; here there might be a thousand different species, enemies and victims and allies, and yet they were all here to do things so very much the same – shop, haggle, eat, entertain, gamble. It was here that you could see that in many ways we really were all very much the same.

Simon found a restaurant that he'd seen before, run by a Daelmokhan. Despite their rather inhuman appearance, the Daelmokhan had biochemistries quite close to that of humans and their restaurants tended to have a large variety of edible, and even quite tasty, selections. Armed with his headware references to make sure he didn't choose unwisely, he quickly made some selections and sat down.

Yes, this was the right call, he thought, as he cracked the shell on a creature that looked like an almost spherical crab with circular frondlike appendages on two sides. I can feel myself relaxing. Once I'm done, I know I'll be able to go to sleep by the time I'm back at the Embassy.

"Hello, Simon. Would you mind terribly if I could sit down?" said a light, musical voice, a voice with just the perfect undertone of huskiness to make it completely arresting.

Startled, he glanced up.

Hair gleaming like spun gold, eyes like pure sapphires, Maria-Susanna looked down at him, smiling, with just a hint of uncertainty that made her look startlingly vulnerable. "Honestly... I need to talk to someone."

 

 

 

Challenges of the Deeps: Chapter 16

Orphan had an explanation to give...

-----

 

Chapter 16.

     "To use a human expression that's probably going to be interesting in translation, Orphan, we're all ears," Ariane said.

Orphan tilted his head. "That... was an interesting expression indeed. But I get the gist of the meaning." He stood, leaning back against a railing in front of the actual viewport, silhouetted against the planet-sized whirlpool of cloud and storm ahead.

"It begins many, many years ago, when I signed on for an expedition to the Deeps headed by a consortium comprised mainly of members of the Vengeance and the Analytic. As I am sure you recall from our prior conversations, the Deeps are of vast interest because they may hide almost anything; in particular, they may conceal remnants of the Voidbuilders, or some of the earliest residents of the Arena, information of great interest to both of those Great Factions.

"Now, one of the things one looks for in these explorations is unknown Sky Gates. While we know that Sky Gates will appear around Spheres of worlds owned by any faction, it is also known that sometimes there are Sky Gates associated with other locations, but not predictably so. Thus, such exploration expeditions will have sensors for the disturbances of Sky Gates and hope to pass close enough to one to detect it. This is naturally a very rare event; even if such Sky Gates are quite common, the Arena is vast beyond easy grasping and the range of detection makes detecting them a random affair indeed."

He turned and looked out of the port; Ariane could see the tightening of the wingcases. "But on this trip we found one, an unknown Sky Gate far from any Sphere. The captains conferred and decided to venture through – not that there was much chance they would decide otherwise, in truth.

"Alas, we emerged in the very center of one of the great storms, a massive tempest that seized our vessels, assaulted them with lightning large enough to span a world, sent us spinning out of control. I managed to reach one of the emergency launches, just as a veritable wave of rocky debris hurtled from the depths of the storm and battered both vessels furiously. A shard of metal embedded itself in the base of my right wing, nearly shearing it off, and piercing deep into my back, but I made it inside. The launch fired thrusters automatically and shot me from the doomed ships; I watched with horror as they began to break up, and then the storm sent me hurtling beyond sight of the disaster.

"Such a small vessel has some advantages in surviving storms, even if there are many others where size would be a great comfort. I could not control the launch, but though I was sent hurtling hither and yon, and occasionally rapped violently by a careening boulder or random zikki, the launch survived reasonably intact; I was somewhat less than well, but my wound would not be swiftly fatal. I could not remove the shard, but there were field dressings in the emergency launch which would prevent infection."

Orphan began pacing slowly back and forth, not even apparently aware of his motion as he continued to speak. "At last, I broke out into clear air, a space where I could get some idea of my bearings and no longer be out of control within the storm.

"To my immense surprise, there was ... something already there. Not a Sphere (although I later discovered a Sphere sat very nearby) but an immense and complex structure, many thousands of kilometers in extent." He glanced to them and tilted his head, a gesture that made her think of a wry grin. "I was, as you might imagine, somewhat reluctant to approach this unknown installation; a Faction that constructs something so large in an isolated portion of the Arena is almost certainly hiding something, and if they were one of the more... intolerant Factions –"

"Like the Molothos," Wu Kung put in.

"Precisely, yes, if they were of that sort of Faction, they would be likely to do something extremely rude and final to me." Orphan seemed to look up through the hull of Zounin-Ginjou. "Still, I had no idea of where I might be, how far away the Sky Gate we had entered by was, nor very many provisions to keep me alive. And it is a general rule of the Arena that stranded people are to be assisted; is this true on your world?"

Ariane nodded emphatically. "Yes. Whether on sea, land, air, or space, a distress signal is expected to be heeded and anyone capable of effecting a rescue in the indicated region is expected to render assistance immediately, regardless of the nationality or associations of the distressed vessel or people. There are some exceptions – it's not a legal requirement for most people – but there's a very strong tradition."

"Excellent; this is of course true with most civilized groups. So, I decided that I had little to lose and headed for this structure as best I could, transmitting one of the standard Arena beacon signals for help." The wingcases drew in even more, and Ariane saw a vibration of the tail that gave her the impression of a shudder.

"Without the slightest warning, my ship was seized by some... unknown force. There was no sign of another vessel or any activity near the huge structure, but my ship was suddenly borne towards it with remarkable rapidity and complete precision; we travelled, as near as I can tell, in an absolutely straight line from my location to a bay at one side of the structure. I attempted to use my ship's thrusters to affect the motion, but to no avail; it seemed to have no more effect than if I had pitted my own wings against the power of Zounin-Ginjou's engines.

"My little vessel landed in the bay, and immediately shut down – again without the slightest act on my part. Seeing that my choices were minimal, I exited the launch. I will not deny that I was not merely mystified, but frightened. There had been no communications of any sort, and in this landing bay was no sign of any other ship, or even any living thing. It was a grand and chilling isolation, a place absolutely devoid of living presences... and yet I knew I was watched, that my slightest move was being noted by whatever force had chosen to bring me thence."

Orphan's entire body swelled and shrank, with a whistling sound from his spiracles – clearly the equivalent of drawing a long, uncertain breath. "My friends, I still find myself shaken merely recalling those moments."

"Can't blame you, Orphan," DuQuesne said. "Sounds like some of our experiences when we first got into the Arena. As Ariane used to say, 'creepy' was the word that came first to mind."

"'Creepy'? Yes, most precisely, creepy is the right description, if the translation holds true." He expanded and rattled his wings, then closed them tightly. "So, I stepped out, and a door across the bay opened. With no little trepidation I made my way across the polished and utterly empty floor to the corridor thus revealed, and was directed in similarly ... creepy... silence through several other twists and turns, until I found myself before a set of immense doors; tired and injured as I was, I waited immobile a moment, trying to decide whether to move forward or not, when the decision was taken from me. The doors parted, folding up and away, and I knew I had no choice. I stepped into a room nearly complete in its darkness. Then, slowly, the darkness began to lift, and there was a figure standing there."

From the tone of Orphan's voice, and the slow-rising tension of his narration, Ariane felt a tingling, cold thrill edging down her spine.

"All at once the light came up... and I found that I was face-to-face with... myself."

Ariane glanced at the others; DuQuesne was staring, riveted, and to her surprise she saw gooseflesh standing out on the former Hyperion's arms. Son Wu Kung's posture was taut, his eyes narrow, but his mouth curled up in a smile, as though the unknown were just one more challenge to assault.

"Holy Mother," DuQuesne muttered. "Creepy doesn't get the half of that." She recognized a particular tone in his voice and realized that Orphan's story must touch on something else, something in DuQuesne's Hyperion past. "Wasn't a mirror, was it?"

The buzzing, low laugh was filled with Orphan's own apprehension. "Ahhh, Doctor DuQuesne, that might almost have been comforting. No. My other self gave me the tiniest of bows, and welcomed me to his home. I asked him, of course, who he was, and he said he was Vindatri. Did you hear that in your language or mine?"

"Yours," Wu Kung answered.

"Hm. Yes, because it was used as a name. But it is also a word, and the word itself was suggestive." He said the word again; this time Ariane heard what seemed half a dozen words or more, all said indistinguishably together. "You do not understand? Perhaps the exact concept is not easily translated. It means something like Watcher, Observer, Monitor, but with hints of 'Guardian', 'Protector', and also 'Judge'."

"Sentinel, maybe?"

"Perhaps, although that loses some nuance." Orphan flicked his hands absently outward, then continued. "Vindatri then bade me stand still, and walked behind me to look at my wound. I felt a shock as the fragment of metal simply tore its way back out of my wing, and I saw my right wing and case drop to the ground; I collapsed myself, and lost consciousness."

Orphan, clearly still nervous, seated himself, though that seemed almost useless as he almost vibrated in the seat. "When I awoke, I sat up – and realized I was no longer in pain. I reached back with my tail... and found that both wingcases were there, intact. The room I found myself in – provided with furniture and other accoutrements perfectly appropriate to our species – had a mirror, and – as you can see now," he turned in his chair slightly, "my back was utterly unmarred; no sign of a scar, no sense of injury, only my memories to tell me that I had ever been injured."

"Damn. So this Vindatri pulled you in, yanked the metal out of you, and fixed you up perfectly?"

"Yes. Rather than draw the remainder of the story out – for it would be long indeed – Vindatri kept me there for some time, discussing what I knew of the Arena and its people. He seemed particularly interested in the Faith and the Shadeweavers, but in my own story as well. Finally, he said to me, 'I have rescued you and healed you. Would you agree that you owe me a debt, Orphan?'

"A very great one, Vindatri, if you can also return me to my home; else my gratitude and debt will mean little, I fear."

"He laughed, and tapped his assent, and said, 'True enough. And there is little you could do directly for me, even then. You have already done me a service by telling me of the Factions I have myself not seen in a very long time. So I will return you, in my own way. You have spoken of the strange powers of the Shadeweavers and Faith, and how you fear their abilities; I shall give you something to protect you from them. For this, I will ask only two things: first, that if ever truly new factions appear, you come, and tell me of them.'"

Orphan stopped, tilted his head. "The second condition, alas, is a secret. Perhaps one day I may tell you. I hope so." He spread his wings. "But now, I think, you understand."

"No doubt," DuQuesne said. "You promised to tell him of new factions, and here we were. And as it turns out, you've got two to talk to him about."

"Exactly," Orphan said. "The fact that you are members of one of the new Factions, I believe, will directly interest Vindatri, and perhaps give you some chance of asking him some very interesting questions."

"Such as," Ariane said, "How he can make a gadget that stops the powers of the Shadeweavers cold, and if that means he can tell me what I can do with mine."

A quick handtap and bob-bow. "Precisely, Captain Ariane Austin." That tilt-headed smile. "I believe you will find this... a most educational trip!"

Challenges of the Deeps: Chapter 15

And now to see things from another point of view...

-----

 

Chapter 15.

     "Leader, an urgent communication for you."

Dajzail looked up from his meal, seeing Kanjstall the Salutant waiting. "That urgent?"

"It is from Fleet Master Alztanza, Leader."

Home and Hive, that is urgent. With only seven Fleet Masters in the entire One Civilization (that the undercreatures mistakenly called an "empire"), communications from them were rare and always important; and Alztanza himself had been one of Dajzail's friends since they were young. "I will take it now, then."

Kanjstall dipped his respect, came forward, and gave him the message crystal. Without being told, Kanjstall dipped again and left. That is why he is my Salutant. I can rely on him utterly.

Placing the crystal in the reader, he was immediately faced by the Fleet Master.

"Dajzail, the Wise and Compassionate," the Fleet Master began, and Dajzail rippled his manipulators in annoyance. I am not some Hive vaingroom, to be foolishly flattered, especially by a friend. But he reminded himself that the last Leader, Alethkand, had been far less tolerant, and the Fleet Master had learned his communications protocol in those days, well before Dajzail had ascended. Fleet Master Alztanza continued, "the Strong and Just, I greet you. We have vital news for you."

As he listened, Dajzail forgot entirely about his meal, and felt his manipulators and entire body vibrating for an entirely different reason: fierce joy. Once the message was concluded, he spoke. "Kanjstall," he said, the green-light ball of Arena communication instantly appearing, "send a message to the Fleet Master, the complete text to be: Report here at once. Then join me in the conferral chamber with the Master of Forces, Master of Homes, and Master of Trade as swiftly as may be."

Dajzail finished his meal, leaving the bones to be cleaned up later, but he barely noticed the sensation of fullness or savored the taste – a shame, he noted distantly, as Tensari was difficult to come by without inciting difficulty with the undercreatures and should not be treated as mere fuel for a day. But his mind was far too occupied to pay attention to anything else.

The other four Molothos were waiting for him in the conferral chamber as he entered. Kanjstall, small but quick on his claws, dark carapace showing the touch of that green peculiar to those from the original homeworld; Malvchait, Master of Forces, massive, almost completely red with highlights of space-black, a warrior and strategist without equal; Elshuti, Master of Homes, mediant sex currently, a steel gray, hir eye damaged across nearly a quarter of its circle but the rest shining clear and sharp; and Master of Trade Peryntik, fresh from her latest molt, her regenerated forelimb still white-soft.

The four dipped low, their lower carapaces touching the floor; he gestured impatiently with one claw and they rose and locked legs for comfort. "What matter is so urgent, Leader?" asked Malvchait.

"The War of Purity moves forward," Dajzail said simply.

The others froze momentarily, and then a great hungry screech of fierce joy rose from all four. "We have word, then?"

"Fleet Master Alztanza finally broke the mystery, yes. His analysts sifted all of the data gathered from the high colonies, and finally discovered that the Twinscabbard-class vessel Blessing of Fire had failed to report back after more than four full revolutions. This was of course only one of several lost in that general period, but the timing was good; it would have been out more than one and a quarter revolutions and due to turn back, thus well out into the Deeps on exploration. Fortunately, there were records for the gene-codes for the Masters and Salutants on Blessing of Fire, and once Alztanza had received them, he was able to match them with the body the undercreature DuQuesne taunted us with."

"We do not know their home-star's exact location, then?"

Dajzail's laugh rippled around the room, a sound he knew would sound far from pleasant to most undercreatures. "Oh, but we do, Elshuti. We know – to within a very small degree – the time at which the conflict must have taken place. Thus, Alztanza was able to determine, within an equally small margin of error, how far Blessing of Fire could have traveled in that time, and what the general planned heading of Blessing of Fire was.

"This leaves only one candidate star, a green-central single-unit star not drastically different from our own, which fits with the human-undercreatures' known illuminance preferences."

"Are there Forces available on the nearest high colony?" asked Peryntik.

"A Seventh-Force is stationed there."

Malvchait bobbed up than down, obviously pleased. "Three hundred forty-three warships? That should be more than sufficient for this. I will take control personally, if you so order, Leader."

"I do wish you, and Alztanza – since it was his discovery – to direct this operation militarily. I will, myself, take command of the Master warship of the operation. However, I do not agree with your initial assessment."

The leader of the Molothos' military forces scissored his claws in apologetic confusion. "Truly? I know they have gained some warships –"

"I have watched these undercreatures very carefully," Dajzail said, and rapped his own fighting claws hard on the table to reinforce his emphasis. "They are dangerous animals. Fortune has favored them multiple times. The warships they were given are from the Survivor, and he is not one to take lightly. The Arena's announcement showed that two of them managed, in some manner, to defeat the entire complement of Blessing of Fire, perhaps even to destroy the ship itself. That may be – almost certainly was – an event that involved great fortune as well as, or even in place of, great skill, but we cannot know that.

"All we do know is that the human undercreatures have won every single challenge they have faced thus far, defeating the True People, the Blessed to Serve, the Vengeance, and the Warpers of Reality, the Shadeweavers themselves." He vibrated in violent negation. "No, we shall take no chances. Assemble a full Force at Zeshezan-Katrill, Master of Forces, all seven Sevenths. No, two full Forces. At the same time, assemble a complete Fleet for quick deployment to lowspace. We will not permit them the luxury of safety anywhere. We will assault and take their Upper Sphere. We will secure their Sky Gates for our own use. We shall bring an entire Fleet thence."

The others rose higher in anticipation.

"And then we will – regardless of cost or time – send that Fleet through their own Sky Gates, come to their very home system, and crush their worlds, and make these undercreatures either the slaves of the True People... or one final, cautionary tale in the history of those who have insulted us!"

 

 

 

 

Challenges of the Deeps: Chapter 14

Our friends were finally on their way...

-----

 

Chapter 14.

     "Orphan…" Ariane said apprehensively. "Are you sure we want to get any closer to that?"

"My dear Captain Austin, we are going to get far closer," Orphan replied with a chuckle.

The immense vessel loomed ever larger in the suddenly-tiny shuttle's viewport. Just about an old-style mile long, and looks it, DuQuesne thought, as he saw a brilliant line of light that widened, became a massive pair of doors into a huge landing bay. "Almost like coming home, isn't it?" he said.

"In some sense it is coming home, Doctor DuQuesne," Orphan said, his wingcases relaxing, showing that he was indeed genuinely happy to be returning to Zounin-Ginjou, the flagship of the Liberated. "I have spent at least as much time in this wonderful ship as I have in Nexus Arena, or on the Liberated's Sphere."

"That is Zounin-Ginjou?" Ariane demanded incredulously. From Wu's expression, he hadn't recognized the ship either.

"Indeed it is," Orphan replied, with an amused tone in his translated voice. "Yet truly, I cannot fault you for being surprised."

"I would've been, if it weren't for the fact that I knew you'd never land on any other ship, and I could tell you were heading for this one from way back," DuQuesne said.

In truth, it did not look much like the quasi-Victorian work of art that was the flagship of the Liberated, replete with brassy-golden trim and fittings, rich wooden hull hiding battleship armor, and vanes and fins to make the most avid Vernian steampunk fanplayer cry with joy. The sleek spindle-shaped vessel was no more; a much broader, duller outline, one completely utilitarian, efficient, massive, with lines and angles that DuQuesne thought were all too familiar.

"It looks like one of the Blessed's ships," Wu said, putting DuQuesne's thoughts into words.

Ariane nodded. "That's exactly why I was nervous; I thought it was a Blessed vessel."

"Quite deliberately so," Orphan said. The shuttle passed through the doors and DuQuesne felt the artificial gravity slowly take over, allowing Orphan to bring the vessel to a soft landing. "The exterior of Zounin-Ginjou is now identical, at least to any ordinary inspection, to that of a Madon-class Arena freighter, a common vessel type for the Blessed to use in intra-Arena trade."

"Ha! I see!" Wu Kung grinned with his sharp fangs showing. "You look like the Blessed, so you can pretend to be one."

"I thought you would understand quickly, Wu Kung. Exactly; I can play the part of my former people very well – I was one, after all, for a long time before changing sides. With luck, any confrontations would be ended by simply identifying the vessel as one of the Blessed; very, very few wish to risk the wrath of any of the Five Great Factions, after all, and the Blessed is probably the second-worst to offend."

"With the first being our hair-trigger xenophobes the Molothos, yeah," DuQuesne said. "I like it. You've made her into a Q-ship; looks like a freighter, registered to a dangerous power, and if someone is stupid enough to try to hijack you…"

"... they find out they're attacking one of the most powerful warships in the Arena," Ariane finished with a grin. "I like it. And now that we're inside, I can definitely see this is really Zounin-Ginjou. What cabins will we have?"

"I see no reason you cannot have those you used previously. In fact, when I was conducting the rather extensive repairs necessitated by our prior argument with the Blessed, I performed a few more modifications to that entire suite of cabins to make them better suited to the use of Humanity."

"I'm sure we'll appreciate that," DuQuesne said, as he made his way to the cargo area. "We've got a lot of stuff to unload here and get to our living area."

Orphan, already making his way down the ramp extending from the forward section of the shuttle, gestured toward some shapes on the far side of the bay. "You will find cargo handling equipment there – I believe you recall how to use it from our prior adventures, yes?"

"Not helping out, Orphan?" Ariane asked with a faint smile.

"Many apologies, but I wish to get us underway immediately. The less time we remain in this part of Arenaspace, the less chance for any to notice this vessel's departure – or the fact that the little shuttle we rode in has docked here."

"No worries," DuQuesne said. "Get us going; this is your party. Me, Wu, and Ariane can get everything moved pretty quick."

It was not all that quick; moving the provisions for what might be up to a year wasn't a trivial exercise, especially when the food and such had to be brought to the galley, while clothes and other personal baggage had to be brought to the living quarters. Still, they were almost done when DuQuesne felt that subliminal shock that told him they'd made a Sandrisson jump, presumably through a Sky Gate. "We're really on our way now," he muttered.

"And I don't have a single meeting to go to!" Ariane said, grinning broadly.

"Yeah, but we have no idea what we're heading into," DuQuesne reminded her – not without an answering grin. "We might be in a battle three days from now, who knows?"

"Battles are fun!" Wu Kung said, emphasizing that with a sharp rapping of his staff on the deck. "Meetings with talk-talk-talk, that is danger!"

"You know, maybe I need to reconsider; is it a good thing that I'm agreeing with Sun Wu Kung?" Ariane asked.

"There are worse choices, but yeah, agreeing with him usually leads to an awful lot of heads getting busted."

"Only bad people's heads," Wu pointed out.

"Generally, I'll grant you that." He straightened up. "I'm going to go check up on our host on the bridge."

The other two followed, Ariane moving up to walk next to him; Zounin-Ginjou's corridors were more than wide enough to make that possible. Orphan sure didn't skimp on comfort on this ship.

Of course, that was partly from necessity. If Orphan had been able to make use of top-of-the-line automation, he could have used every cubic inch of space for more armor, weapons, stores, and so on, leaving himself only as much space as he wished to keep for his own comfort and any anticipated allies. But with the Arena restricting automation to the point that he was stuck somewhere around the early 21st century, Orphan ran into a different limitation: how much he could actually control.

Without intelligent automation, there were only so many bells and whistles he could hang onto Zounin-Ginjou before they became useless distractions. Paradoxically, even though the ancient-style automation took up a lot more space per system, he ended up with a huge amount left over because he couldn't install nearly as many systems; some of that volume was of course used as additional cargo space, but he had apparently decided that a large luxury suite might one day be useful, and turned a hundred cabins' worth of space into about twenty.

Even so, Zounin-Ginjou packed a fantastic amount of firepower and resources into its hull compared to any similar vessel, and DuQuesne approved. When you're alone in the Dark, carrying the biggest guns you can helps light things up, so to speak.

"Relaxing while you can?" he asked Ariane.

"As much as I can, yes. It's not easy; I'm always worried about what's going on back at Nexus Arena. It's only been six days, but…"

"... but we know how a few days can change everything. But you were right about this trip. I can feel it, somehow."

"So can I. But I'm still worried."

Wu Kung grunted behind them. "I worry a little, but mostly that's a waste of time. We just have to be ready."

"Yeah," agreed DuQuesne as they arrived at the bridge, "the problem is, ready for what?"

"Oh, wow," Ariane said, looking up.

"Ahh, Captain Austin, I see you already appreciate some of the wonders of the Arena."

Wu Kung bounded up and pressed his face against the near-indestructible transparent ring-carbon port, staring in a combination of joy and awe.

Before Zounin-Ginjou was a vast canyon of clear air, with gargantuan, rolling walls of cloud to either side, extending unguessable kilometers above and below their current course. Streaming twilight-lavender and grey-touched black, rolling deep green and mountain-waves of deepest blue, the clouds formed a dark corridor with faint yet white-tinted light streaming from behind the massive ship.

A barely-visible cone of shadow preceded them, a shadow against shadows where Zounin-Ginjou blocked the light of the Luminaire that must be almost directly aft. Periodically, blue-white, brilliant scarlet, or burning orange arcs of lightning would streak across the impossibly huge clouds, swift yet traveling so far that the eye could sometimes follow them into the distance ahead or above or below. Other lightning strokes, deeper within the clouds, would illuminate the interior, turning the dark cloud momentarily to a wall of frosted crystal tinted with all the colors of the rainbow.

"Wow," Ariane said again, reverently. "Orphan, do you ever get tired of it?"

"One grows used to anything... but with your eyes, I see it anew, and am once more uplifted and humbled. Humbled by the vastness and the grandeur of the Arena... and uplifted by the thought that I, Orphan of the Liberated, am one of those who may travel these skies at my own will."

He does "talk purty", as Rich would've said. Wonder if his own people would hear language this flowery? "Where are we?"

"That, Doctor DuQuesne, is actually a most interesting and perplexing question. I can describe the location, if I wish, by the directions needed to reach it, but can I truly say I know where it is? I do not know. For instance, I cannot tell you whether Nexus Arena lies in the direction we are heading, or behind us, whether it is a mere twenty million kilometers to our port side or five light-years distant to starboard. Without an active, inhabited Sphere in this area of space, with inhabitants to tell us from which galaxy they hail, we cannot even guess where within the vastness of the Arena we may be."

"Are we in the Deeps yet?" Wu Kung asked.

"We begin to approach them. But our destination is still a great distance away... or, at least, a great deal of time away, even though for all I know our destination lies just on the other side of these clouds."

"So where are we going right now?"

"There is another Sky Gate here," Orphan answered. He studied various instruments; DuQuesne saw lines flicker on the viewport. "If my navigation is correct – and I am reasonably confident that it is – the Gate lies just inside of the wall of cloud to our starboard side, about two thousand kilometers ahead and down, relative to our current orientation. If we detect no other vessels here, then we will pass through that gate."

"And if we do detect other vessels?"

"Then we will continue on, pass through another gate that is ahead, above, and just slightly to port. I will then have to take another roundabout route to return here again, taking us another several days."

Ariane nodded. "So that gate you want to go through is one you know about, but no one else does."

"You have the essence of it, yes. Though there may be others who know. I have no knowledge of any others living who do, however."

"You sensing any ships now?"

"None whatsoever. And, with luck, we shall detect no others. This is a very little-traveled route."

"And then we will be in the Deeps?"

"For a while, yes. Then another short leg of the journey through somewhat-explored territory before we reach our true destination."

DuQuesne nodded. Wherever Orphan was taking them clearly had to be reached a very specific way – which fit with what he knew of the Arena. There must be a lot of places that can only be reached one way – one sequence of Sky Gates in or out.

Zounin-Ginjou, disguised or not, was still very fast, and it was not long before they were approaching the area of the secret Gate. Orphan spent the last few moments watching his monitors tensely before finally turning the vessel and sending it darting straight for the clouds a short distance below them.

A blaze of pearlescent light started at the forward end of Zounin-Ginjou, and DuQuesne knew another had started aft, the two light-circles racing to meet each other. That undefinable, tingling jolt, and suddenly the scene outside the port changed. A majestic maelstrom of silvery cloud spread out below them, turning with ponderous, lazy power beneath a sky of gold.

Orphan rose from his seat and turned. "Welcome to the Deeps of the Arena, my friends." He bowed deeply. "And now... now there are none to hear us as far as any can imagine, and at last I can tell you the why of our little journey."

Challenges of the Deeps: Chapter 13

Preparations for departure are underway...

-----

 

 

Chapter 13.

     "Not taking Zounin-Ginjou?" Simon asked, looking at the relatively small craft – no more than fifty meters long – that was sitting at the end of the berth the Liberated were assigned.

"Later," Orphan said, carefully checking the exterior of his ship. "If all three of us took Zounin-Ginjou from here, too many eyes would note the departure; this is a short range vessel, the sort used for brief jaunts from point to point."

"With your permission," said Sethrik, watching as DuQuesne dragged a large case into the shuttle's loading door, "We intend to allow a 'leak', as you call it, of information which will lead people to believe that the Liberated were donating some very valuable materials to your cause, and this was the mission to transfer it out of sight or range of those in Transition. Sensitive material is often transferred in this manner. Decoy missions as well, of course, so they will wonder whether the real material is in some other shipment through Transition at about the same time."

"And in actuality you are just transferring Orphan, Marc, Ariane, and Wu to Zounin-Ginjou?"

Sethrik gave the swift outward flick of the hands that indicated negation. The former member of the Blessed and only other member of the Liberated continued, "Our story will have a core of truth, and you will be receiving something very useful to your current efforts. Details can be leaked later, so that suspicion will be kept to a minimum until it is far too late for anyone to even attempt an effective investigation."

Simon shook his head, smiling. "Everything you do in the Arena seems to have three more layers than one sees."

"And that," Orphan said, leaping back to the loading dock, "is why the Liberated still exists. Three or four layers are the minimum."

"I think we're ready, Orphan," said Ariane, Wu shadowing her closely; Simon saw his eyes darting everywhere.

Ahh. The last time they were on the Docks, Ariane was kidnapped. I doubt Wu Kung will ever forget that. And this is an open, and thus potentially dangerous area, and one that we know has far less restrictive rules on violence. "So you have no idea when you will return?" he asked again.

Ariane shook her head, making the dark-blue hair ripple. "Afraid not. A pretty long time, though, so I'm going to be trusting you to keep things under control here. Laila and Carl are in charge, but you're going to be my eyes while I'm gone, you know."

"I know." He took her hand. "I will miss you. Perhaps a dinner when we return?"

She grinned. "Perhaps!"

"C'mon, Ariane, let's get inside and give Wu a chance to settle down," DuQuesne said, emerging from the door. "Everything set, Orphan?"

"All is in readiness, if all of your cargo is loaded."

"I don't see any travel bags," Simon said, looking around.

"Everything's in one of the crates," DuQuesne said. "That way doesn't instantly look like we're going on a long cruise."

Sethrik gave the compress-release gesture that approximated a shrug. "When your Leader is no longer seen, they will realize she is gone."

Ariane raised a finger. "Not so quickly they won't. Credit Oscar Naraj with this idea: anyone watching will see me and DuQuesne emerge from Transition, go back to the Embassy, and then a little while later see both of us go join Tunuvun and a bunch of Genasi on a clearly Earth-designed ship. The rumor there – and like yours, it will also be true – is that we're making an official gift of an Arena-capable vessel, with a lot of normal-space tech and information, to the Genasi."

"Ah, of course," Orphan said, with his oft-amused tone. "And these decoys will not be seen again. But then the questions about where you have gone will center, not around the Liberated, but the Genasi. Who have an honor debt of immense size to you, so keeping the secret is a given. Well done."

Ariane gave Simon a quick hug, and didn't hesitate to include a swift but emphatic kiss before pulling away. DuQuesne shook his hand, as did Wu Kung.

Simon waved as the four disappeared inside the small Arena ship, and watched alongside Sethrik as the sleek transport – something like a Victorian-designed bullet with wings – pulled away and accelerated smoothly towards the area of the Sky Gates around Nexus Arena.

"So," he said to the tall, green-and-black alien as they began walking back, "do you have any better idea than I do as to what it is that Orphan's all secretive about?"

"Unlikely," Sethrik said. "While he has given me many details about the history of the Liberated, about our resources – surprisingly large, given how much the Faction was reduced – and so on, he has remained extremely quiet about his personal secrets. And this one seems even more personal than most."

Simon nodded. "I rather expected as much. Although you would also have to deny it if he had told you but wished you to keep it secret, I suppose."

"You begin to understand the way of the Arena, yes." Sethrik looked into the distance; this part of the Docks was actually rather empty today. Simon wondered if there was some sort of day/night cycle in loading and arrivals, or if it was merely the random chance of schedules. "Of course, even with the distractions you have planned, it will eventually become clear to watchers that Orphan and your Leader are gone, and they will reach the correct conclusion that they left together on this day."

"But that shouldn't pose an immediate problem, correct?"

Sethrik's buzzing chuckle was somewhat disconcerting. "What should be, and what does happen, these are often different things in the Arena. As I have occasion to know. Still, no, I would expect that Orphan will have gained enough time so that the chances of any tracing his passage or learning his destination will be extremely small."

They passed from the Docks to the interior of Nexus Arena, and Sethrik waved down one of the automated hovercabs. "Are you returning to your Embassy?"

"No, Sethrik – I actually have business at the Analytic today, so you go first."

Sethrik gave the handtap of assent and directed the cab to bring them first to the Embassy of the Liberated, before carrying Simon on to the Analytic's Great Faction house. Simon jumped down and walked into the huge, soaring edifice of polished alloy, glass, and stone that was the home of the faction dedicated to pure knowledge.

Having been there multiple times previously, it was simple to make his way to the Archives. Not so simple was keeping his breath from being taken away upon entering. The vaulted ceiling, a hundred meters above, with arched windows streaming sunlight – or a perfect facsimile thereof – into the cavernous space filled with rank upon rank of shelves, the shelves themselves fifty meters high, and each row dwindling away into unguessable distance, fading into the softness of mountains on the horizon. Here was the sum-total of the knowledge of the Analytic, one of the five Great Factions, the knowledge of a hundred thousand years and more, of species beyond counting, of Challenges as vast as the stars of Earth's sky, of secrets from a million worlds.

And I have nearly a whole year to roam it at will. It seemed a terribly short time, yet the opportunity was beyond price. Simon Sandrisson could not restrain a wicked grin. When the Analytic's board had agreed to give him this access, they had clearly believed they had by far the better end of the deal, because the access lacked one crucial element: access to the indexes of the Archives, the searchable database-equivalent of the incomprehensibly huge morass of data, prototypes, samples, and other accumulated knowledge held within the Archives. Thus – as far as they knew – Simon had no way of knowing where to find data that he truly wanted, nor of translating finds that were not recorded in any known language, for the Arena's translation did not work for such data, only in general for the spoken word.

Had they known about that nigh-omniscience that Simon could tap, they might have thought very differently.

"Ahhh, Simon! I had heard you had come to visit!" The rough tones of Relgof Nov'ne Knarph interrupted his reverie. "And I see you cannot yet enter the Archives without feeling the impact of a thousand generations of knowledge."

"Can you, Doctor Rel?"

The semi-humanoid alien's filter-beard rippled with a chuckle. "No, truly. The immediate impact has somewhat lessened, but never have I come here without a moment of awe and reverence. Let others have their gods; I have this temple of knowledge."

"Have you come to watch me wander the stacks?"

"That is a fascinating turn of phrase, Simon, given the circumstances," Relgof said, with a near-human tilt of the head. "Come, let us examine a section of the Archives."

Climbing into one of the egg-shaped floating carts used the way old-fashioned library ladders were – to reach any part of otherwise inaccessible materials, the two set off; Relgof allowed Simon to direct the course of the cart. I wonder what he meant by that bit about circumstances. Since he didn't have a particular question in mind at the moment, Simon chose a direction at random and sped the cart down it for four and a half kilometers, stopping at a set of shelves with assorted memory crystals and some models and skeletal exhibits. A record of a civilization? An archaeological record?

"So, are you going to clarify that comment, Rel?"

Relgof did not bother to pretend he didn't understand. "Simon, the Analytic can, of course, observe any activities within its own House. You have visited several times. Now, we are both well aware that you were denied the use of the Great Index and other search tools.

"It is rather difficult to imagine how, then, you managed – on your first visit – to unerringly locate key records on detection and uses of Sky Gates, and based on your reactions and subsequent events, were able to understand them, despite at least one source being in an ancient language with no known remaining members."

Simon kept his face expressionless with an effort. Of course, since the Arena seems to even sometimes translate expressions from body posture, I cannot be sure some of my surprise or concern was not also translated.

"Now," Relgof went on, reaching out and picking up one of the models of a strange house with oval doors and hexagonal windows, "It so happens that – at the moment – I believe I am the only one who knows about that most unbelievable event, since the others were not inclined to monitor you. And I do not wish to alert them to this. I am however genuinely curious and wonder if you might be willing to enlighten me."

Simon raised an eyebrow. "I don't suppose you would accept 'coincidence' as an answer."

"Would you, my friend?"

"No. I admit that I don't have nearly your experience with the Archives, but even my few visits have given me some impression of its vastness." Simon thought for a moment as he took memory crystals and fit them into a visualizing device built into the cart, scanning the images and text therein. History, looks like. Might be archeological work on a long-vanished species. Relgof watched patiently.

Finally, Simon shrugged. "I won't deny that I have found a way around that limitation, but the value of that secret – in all honesty – is a lot greater than a mere year's access to the Archive."

Relgof's filter-beard froze, and the entire creature weant rigid. After a moment he relaxed. "Yes, I suppose it must be. Either you have – in a manner we find undetectable – managed to gain access to the Index, which insofar as I am aware would require assistance directly from a Shadeweaver or Initiate Guide, or you have found a method that allows you personally to find what you wish without any recourse to the Index."

Technically, without any recourse to the Archives at all. But I am far too cautious and – in honesty – afraid of using this power to that extent. "That seems to be roughly correct, Relgof. What do you intend to do about it, if anything?"

"Hmmm. Well... I would be willing to not mention this to anyone – and to steer the rest of the Analytic away from analyzing your visits, if any show such interest – if you have some unique piece of information, something useful to impart to me."

Simon pursed his lips. "I suppose friendship does have limits when such secrets are involved."

"When I am, myself, the Chief Researcher, the Leader of the Faction? Alas, yes. I must receive value for that offered. I have allowed considerable latitude already, partially for the uniqueness of your situation as First Emergents, and partly because I feel we truly are kindred spirits. But this…"

"I understand. Not like our prior after-hours research where the information we uncovered was something of interest to us both."

Relgof tilted his head. "To what do you refer?"

Simon blinked in puzzlement. "Rel, to that rather long-drawn out session of research on the background of Shadeweaver and Faith capabilities, culminating in your discovery of that old story about the Ryphexian 'Master of Engines'?"

The gangly alien's posture and voice were replete with utter confusion. "Simon, I confess that I have not the slightest idea of the event to which you refer."

Suddenly it all made sense. There had been no references in the Index to Shadeweaver or Faith powers being used outside of the Arena. The two had found it necessary to perform many hours of research in order to find a single confirmation.

If you want to keep a secret like that... you need a way of making people forget.

     But Ariane Austin's victory over the Shadeweavers in direct Challenge against Amas-Garao meant that the Shadeweavers could not affect Simon or any other human. That didn't hold true for the other species and factions, however.

Simon suddenly smiled. "Then I have something to trade, Rel – your real problem is going to be keeping it in mind long enough to make use of it!"

 

 

 

Challenges of the Deeps: Chapter 12

And what do you do after winning a race? A party, that's what!

-----

 

Chapter 12.

     "As always, a fine celebration," Orphan said, observing Wu Kung trying to imitate a whirling dance by three of the Genasi, while a laughing crowd of a dozen species watched the performance. "Afterward, however, would I be correct to hope that you and Captain Austin will be free?"

"You mean, to go on your little jaunt into the back end of nowhere? That's the plan," DuQuesne answered. He had noticed the tall alien had a particularly cheerful demeanor – even more, in his estimation, than the simple fact of the victory would have been espected to cause. He's definitely got another secret that's amusing the hell out of him. "Barring someone else throwing an emergency curveball at us. Which I hope won't happen for a few days, so that we'll be well gone and leave the others to deal with it."

"So you have already made most of the necessary arrangements? Excellent. Might I ask who will be serving as Faction Leader in Ariane's absence?"

DuQuesne thought a moment, but didn't see any harm in telling him; it wasn't as though the information wouldn't be general knowledge soon enough. "Carl Edlund and Laila Canning," he said, reaching out and grabbing a mini-sandwich from a nearby platter. "Simon's going to advise them, too, but he's got other work to do that we don't want interrupted."

"Research in the Analytic Archives being a large part of it, I would presume," Orphan said with a handtap, and helped himself to a crustacean of some sort.

DuQuesne ignored the faint but audible crunch as whatever piercing mechanism Orphan hid inside his mouth-proboscis penetrated the shell, and looked narrowly at the green and black alien. "Just how did you know about that?"

"Oh, I was able to deduce it from conversations with both Researcher Relgof and Simon himself. An extremely interesting situation, if I guess aright. How long does he have access?"

"Sorry, that's need-to-know, and you don't need to know," DuQuesne said with a grin.

"Of course. No harm in asking, however."

"None at all, as long as you drop it like that whenever we say it's off limits – and to your credit, you always have, so far."

Orphan laughed and gestured vaguely around him. "But of course, Doctor DuQuesne; as I told you when first we met, the Arena is built on secrets; asking about them, and knowing when to stop asking, is the true lifeblood of Arena interactions." His wide black eyes studied Wu Kung. "For instance, I would dearly like to know what was discussed in that interim when the five of you vanished, when old Selpa first objected, and then withdrew his objection. But I know for certainty that that secret must be one of considerable value, and if you ever wish to convey it to me, you will decide it on your own."

Yeah. More value than you know. "Just like I'd be real interested to know what's got you looking like a cat that just busted into the cream warehouse, but I figure you're telling no one until you're ready."

"Doctor DuQuesne, you have some most refreshing turns of phrase, though I have a great suspicion that what I heard there bears relatively little relation to what you actually said. And yes, I am not yet ready to discuss that issue with you. But soon, I promise. Very soon indeed, with luck."

A movement caught his eye and he turned to see the rhino-like Byto coming to a stop nearby. "Byto? I'm a little surprised to see you here."

The shift of the head and body was somehow equivalent to a nod. "I had not originally expected to come... but I wished to speak with you for at least a moment."

Orphan maintained his position, and while Byto glanced at the Leader of the Liberated, he made no indication that Orphan should leave. "Well," said DuQuesne, "I've got no objections to that. What about?"

"I wished to say that you played an extremely good game – with, as far as I could tell, absolutely terrible alignment of chance against you."

DuQuesne grinned. "And you played a hell of a game yourself, with the devil's own luck."

The massive form relaxed fractionally, and a snort was translated as a laugh. "DuQuesne, I have never had such a run of fortune in all my years. I was certain we would win... and at the same time, I felt it was almost unfair. If you have the opportunity... I would very much like to play you again, hopefully when the random factors are more equally distributed…" another snort, "... and you have no impossibilities waiting to save you at the end."

"I'd like that, Byto. Tell you what, I'm going to be busy for a while, but as soon as I get a chance we'll set up a game and choose some matched racers, and maybe do some less-apocalyptic-sized betting on the outcome."

"So let it happen!" Byto bobbed his huge head in what seemed the rough parallel of a bow, and moved off.

"That was auspicious," Orphan observed. "Byto is one of the best players of most games of skill and chance combined in the Arena. Having him on friendly terms with you cannot help but be a good thing."

"That's my take on it. He's still wound up over exactly what happened there, but I guess the game's more important to him. Selpa didn't come, and I'm not sure we'll see him for a while."

"Someday," Orphan said with that tilt that indicated a wry smile, "I would very much like to know what the objection was (though I could guess that much), and how, precisely, you managed to counter it."

Given that it's one of our biggest secrets? Not likely. "Don't hold your breath, Orphan. That's a secret worth more than you're likely to offer."

"Unsurprising," he said with equanimity. "The objection being what I suspect, anything that could counter it would be... extraordinary."

Across the room, DuQuesne saw Ariane finally disengage from what had been a long conversation with Nyanthus and Mandallon and start making her way towards DuQuesne.

"Orphan," she said with a cheerful nod. "Enjoying yourself?"

"Greatly, yes," Orphan replied. "But I noticed your most direct approach to our location, and suspect you wish to speak to Doctor DuQuesne rather than myself."

Good eyes as usual; that's what I figured.

Ariane gave a half-smile. "As usual, you're right. But you don't have to move. Come on, Marc, I want to talk with you somewhere quieter."

DuQuesne nodded and followed her out of the Embassy ballroom and down a hall that led to one of the smaller conference rooms. "What's up, Captain?" he asked, as the door slid shut.

"Hold on." She went around the room with a device in her hand, scanning carefully. DuQuesne, recognizing what she was doing, stayed quiet.

Finally, she straightened, then gave instructions to the Embassy directly that included both electronic and sound insulation, as well as physical security (i.e., locking the door against intrusion).

"That secure, huh?"

"Did I do the job right?"

"You mean checking? Yeah, looks like you should have covered pretty much everything. You're a quick learner. So, what's the deal?"

She sat down, gesturing him to join her. "Marc, this is one of the few times I'm separated from Wu without having to order him away, so I wanted to get a few answers from you now."

Right. I kinda expected this. "Go ahead, Captain."

"I think I've finally put two and two together. What happened today – what Wu had the Arena show us – and the discussion afterwards, plus a couple other things, tells me what that secret is you were telling Oasis – "K" – in private."

"And that is…?"

"Well... we heard what Byto and Selpa said, and it echoed in more detail something we heard from Orphan way back when – that there's a limit to how much individuals could enhance themselves. And we even have some more direct evidence for it – a couple of the top commando soldiers we brought in found that their enhanced capabilities were way below spec here in the Arena, and nothing they could do would bring those capabilities back. But when they went back home, everything worked fine."

Startled, DuQuesne gave a nod and a grin. "You know, I didn't pick up on that little test at all. You managed that right under our noses and no one caught on?"

"I did. Well, with Saul and the CSF helping set it up on the quiet. They wanted to verify that guess. They weren't happy about the results, either."

"I can imagine. Go on."

"Well, back when the Blessed had kidnapped me and you guys rode to the rescue, we thought we'd lost Wu – and then he showed up at the head of a living armada and kicked the crap out of practically a whole crew of Blessed. And that made me think about Wu Kung really hard, and even more so after this race. Did you know he could actually communicate with Arena animals? I wondered if that was just something anyone could do – I mean, the Arena does all that other translating for free – but I couldn't get any other creatures to react when I tried it out on our Upper Sphere."

"Yeah, I knew. He showed it the first time we visited the Sphere together, and I had a gut feeling it meant something important."

"Something like an extension of what Byto described, right? About Hyperion being the world for your people."

"You've got it," DuQuesne said. I think she really does. "And yes, I think it does mean what you think it does, for Wu, maybe for Ki... Oasis, and probably for me, too. I'm not going any farther than that, even here. If we're right, it's the biggest ace in the hole humanity has."

"And you don't trust Wu to keep the secret?"

"It's not a matter of trusting Wu," DuQuesne said. "It's knowing what Wu's like. He can keep a secret like, oh, a surprise birthday party, or a prank he's going to pull, for a few days, but a secret this big, and one that affects him, for what might be months or years – since ideally we don't want to let that set of felines out of their containment units until we absolutely have to? No, he'd never manage that. He'd get put in some situation where he got really mad over someone being mistreated and let it all out. We saw that within the first few weeks we were here. Sure, that worked out fine in the end with Tunuvun, but…"

She nodded. "I understand. And I understand why you didn't even want to drop it on me. You couldn't be sure, and even if you were, we don't know the nature and extent of ... this issue."

"Right."

Ariane nodded again and stared abstractedly into the empty air of the conference room. "Can I ask you something, Marc?"

"You can always ask. And I'll try to answer."

"When you... in your original life, I mean…" She rolled her eyes, a flash of blue below the sky-blue hair. "Argh. When you were in Hyperion, you and Richard Seaton were best friends, right?"

"Pretty much from the time we met, yeah. We were a lot alike, but just enough different that the other guy sort of filled in gaps the first one didn't know he had, if that makes any sense."

"It does. So... I read the original Skylark books, of course. He must have married Dorothy Vaneman, if they kept anything about him the same."

"Sure did. I was best man, of course."

"So you…" She actually blushed slightly. "Did you meet anyone? If you were replacing Crane, then you would have –"

He looked down. "No, never did, quite. There were... well, could have been, maybe, a couple women, but the chance never quite came. See, I wasn't quite the original DuQuesne, so Stephanie De Marigny wasn't really the match for me, I wasn't Crane, so they didn't put Margaret Spencer in, and I wasn't exactly Kimball Kinnison either, though our adventures were in a universe that combined the two series, so I never had a Clarissa equivalent." He felt his smile touched with sadness. "The old bastard admitted that he and his friend never could quite figure out the right person to match me with, and said he wasn't sure if he should be sad or grateful, since it would've meant I lost even more when…"

"I know," she said quickly. "There was nothing left of your ... world, then?"

"No," he said heavily. "The five of us were the main targets of the counteraction at first, and the AIs driving the countermeasure figured – probably rightly – that depriving us of our whole basis, our world, was the best chance of breaking us."

"So... who was 'the old bastard' you mentioned?"

"My personal Frankenstein, Doctor Timothy J. Bryson (though he didn't actually rate the title of 'Doctor'). The guy in charge of making the Doc Smith Hyperion – and honestly pretty much the only one so interested in Smith's old work that he pushed through my creation."

"Are you saying he's still alive?"

"Yeah. Not many of them left, after Maria-Susanna got through with them, but... well, after I got over being furious at the whole mess of them, I decided I at least owed him my existence so I helped him disappear – with a little assist from Saul. Gave him another warning before we left about our new problem – the renegade AI. Maybe it's not going to give a damn about the so-called experimenters, but I didn't want to take chances."

The look she gave DuQuesne warmed him through. "Marc, that was... noble of you."

"What? No, I... look, okay, it was more than some of the others would've done for their creators, yeah. But mad as I was about what he'd done, he was one of the ones who decided that the whole thing had gone too far. I never found out for sure... but I think he – and Nat, his AISage and fellow researcher – might've tweaked the security feeds enough to give us the slack we needed. I do know he was one of the ones that tried to help both groups get out of there when it came apart. And the two of them had created me. I wouldn't be here, wouldn't have any memories real or false, if he hadn't reached back three centuries and tried to breathe life into some old author's pulp fiction."

"So you helped this Bryson and his AISage escape?"

"Just Bryson." He shook his head. "Nat... Nat got wiped out making sure Bryson and a couple others got clear. Don't know who got him, but it was one of the villain AIs, I'm pretty sure. Maybe even the one we're dealing with now." He looked up, although he wasn't seeing the far side of the room now; just the old man's face, and the shadow of Hyperion. "Anyway, why'd you ask?"

"Well…" She blushed. "Never mind. We had better get back to the celebration, and tomorrow we'll have a lot to get ready for."

"As you say, Captain." He could not keep a broad smile from his face as he rose and gestured the door open. "After you!"

 

 

Challenges of the Deeps: Chapter 11

Sun Wu Kung had won the race...

-----

 

Chapter 11.

     Even as Wu crossed the finish line, he was suddenly there in front of Ariane, skidding to a halt not three meters from the table at which DuQuesne and his opponent were seated, surrounded by rank upon rank of spectators, silent, staring, frozen in disbelief and shock. Even though she had been warned, Ariane was herself still in a state of utter awe. DuQuesne had said Wu was better than him. But this…

And then the silence broke and a roar of applause, of furious curses and mighty cheers, broke over the Arena like a wave. Tunuvun caught up Wu Kung in an embrace that must have made even ring-carbon supported ribs creak, and his words were incoherent but needed no translation to hear the joy and gratitude.

Orphan was moving forward along with Ariane, and she saw his body's pose echoed a new emotion: vindication.

Wu escaped Tunuvun's grasp only to be swept into a bear-hug of victory by DuQuesne. "Dammit, Wu, you scared the crap out of me! Don't ever cut it that fine again!"

The Hyperion Monkey King was grinning, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. "Those Adjudicators were not playing, DuQuesne! I really had to work! It was fun! Lots of fun!"

"It was a most... artistic finish, Sun Wu Kung," Orphan said, with a full pushup-bow. "Such a victory will be remembered long indeed."

That strange expression remained clear on the alien's face and form, and Ariane wondered what it meant. You learned something there. You were looking utterly disappointed before, almost crushed really. Now you're riding high. "Did you have a bet on this match?"

"Ahh, Captain Austin, I think you have come to know me well. Yes, a most interesting result, and most profitable as well." His black eyes seemed to twinkle at her. "But we shall speak of this later. It is time for the victor to receive his prize."

The crowd which had begun to flood the center of the ring fell back – or was gently shoved back by the glittering golden light of the Arena. "Sun Wu Kung," the calm, quiet yet thunderous voice of the Arena began, "Step—"

"We object!"

The voice was the rough bass of Byto, echoed by the higher-pitched precision of none other than Selpa'A'At, who had reached the side of his selected champion. "Arena, we object!"

The entire crowd went deathly silent, and Ariane looked around nervously. "What's going on?"

Orphan was studying the Leader of the Vengeance with a clinical air. "While it is rare, it is possible for a Challenger, or Challenged, to object that some aspect of a Challenge was unfair or that somehow the result was rigged against them. These objections are rarely sustained – the Arena is, after all, the overseer of the Challenges – but it is their right and it has been known to work."

After a moment's silence, the Arena spoke. "Your objection will be heard. However, only the relevant parties shall be involved in the discussion."

Without even a blink, Ariane found herself in a smaller – but still huge – room with only DuQuesne, Wu Kung, Tunuvun, Byto, and Selpa. Even the far more experienced Leader of the Vengeance looked startled and disoriented. "State your objection, Selpa'A'At of the Vengeance."

Recovering from his startlement, Selpa lifted his manipulators and pointed to Wu Kung. "He has been enhanced to a degree that reveals malfeasance in this contest. Either a Shadeweaver or an Initiate Guide has provided him with capabilities beyond those allowed any of us in the Arena."

"You are saying I cheated?" Wu Kung began to lunge forward, tearing free of even DuQuesne's attempt to restrain him; without warning he was pinned to the ground by a force beyond even the Monkey King's ability to oppose.

"Violence will not be tolerated," the Arena said dispassionately. "There was no cheating or manipulation, Leader of the Vengeance."

"Do you think I would have tolerated cheating?" Tunuvun demanded. "I do not know how my brother Wu Kung did what he did, but you –"

"Is it not true that the Shadeweavers and Initiate Guides have powers to sometimes conceal their work from even you, Arena?" Selpa said, ignoring Tunuvun's anger.

"It is," the Arena conceded calmly. "But this is irrelevant to the current instance."

"We know the rules, Arena! Any species may enhance its individuals only so far beyond their natural level! We have seen what the other humans can do, and there is no possible way in which this –"

DuQuesne raised his hand. "Hold on. Arena, there are... elements of our security here that may be relevant."

"Understood."

Tunuvun stopped and gave a narrow stare at DuQuesne, and then at Wu Kung, who met his gaze with a swift nod.

Ariane thought she was finally getting an inkling of what was going on – of what DuQuesne was implying – and it sent a chill down her spine... whether of fear or excitement, though, she wasn't sure.

 

"Show them."

Everyone suddenly stared at Wu Kung as he rose, slowly, from the floor, glaring furiously at Selpa and Byto. "Wu, are you sure –" DuQuesne began.

"SHOW THEM!" shouted Wu Kung. "Show them and bind them to never speak of it, but show them, so they will know that my honor remains!"

"Ariane Austin, do you give permission?"

Ariane looked from Wu to DuQuesne. "Marc? What am I giving permission for?"

Mark's brows were drawn down, but not in anger; in pained sympathy. "To show these two why Wu's so far beyond everyone. Why it's right that he is. To show them... Hyperion."

"What?" Ariane was stunned. "Arena? You could do that?"

"Yes."

She saw DuQuesne start to speak, then close his mouth with a visible effort. He wants to say something more, but he's not. He's letting me figure it out on my own. "Can and will you do as Wu asked? Show them, but not allow them to tell anyone else of secrets learned here, in any fashion?"

"Yes."

Great. Now I just have to decide what to do. "What happens if I say no? Selpa, you have the Arena's word that there was no cheating. You have Tunuvun, your selected champion, saying there was no cheating. You also have my word, if you care to take it, that there was none, and that the reason for Wu's abilities is a secret of Humanity's that just knowing is more valuable than I can easily imagine. Can you let it go at that?"

The Leader of the Vengeance swayed uncertainly on his spidery legs, looking even more like a harvestman than usual. "I wish I could, Captain Austin," he said finally, and the regret in his voice sounded genuine. "But this is an entire Sphere that hangs in the balance."

"One Sphere of many, which would go to a species that deserves one. You of all people should understand and sympathize with these people, the worst victims of the Arena's usual rules!" At her words, Tunuvun gave a complex look – both grateful and pained. He hates having to have others stand up for his people... but also is grateful if anyone does.

"I do." There was actual pain in Selpa's voice. "And were the Sphere truly mine to do with as I please, it would be different. But I am the Vengeance and I must do as the Vengeance requires. I cannot simply let this go on the word of the force that is – as it well knows – an agent of our Adversaries, and that of a still-new species which is not even fully understood. You must understand this, Captain Austin. I am sure you do."

She sighed. "I wish I didn't. But yes, I understand." She looked up – even though that was silly, the Arena wasn't really in any particular location. "Arena, if I refuse, what happens?"

"The results of the race will stand and the awarding of the prize will commence. There will be political and personal issues that you will be forced to confront due to this unusual event."

Translated: there'd be a lot of people who suspected some kind of underhanded trickery, maybe even, now that she thought of it, believe she had somehow managed to do it using the powers that were still locked away inside her. And Wu Kung, who was now staring at her with pleading emerald eyes wide, would forever be under a shadow of suspicion.

And for him, honor's one of the most important things in the universe.

It was that – and, possibly, a tiny bit of her own curiosity – that decided her. "All right, Wu. Arena, I give permission. With the restrictions mentioned, show us all the truth that Sun Wu Kung wants us to see."

"By your command."

Suddenly she floated in an omniscient void, looking down and through, as seven young people sat around a table, and joked and laughed, and one had an idea, and the others started discussing it…

... the same seven, and more people, both virtually and physically present, and the talk becoming something more serious, examining possibilities, designs which could be made, what could never be achieved, and what might be possible.

A shimmering tracery of girders, nanoassemblers and automated machines spinning a web, girdling it with cables and reinforcing ring-carbon, steel and aluminum and titanium, an immense shining colony…

And now images, so fast she could barely grasp them, yet could sense the emotions, the impressions, the gestalt that each image represented: a blond man in a gold uniform, stripes meaning "Captain" on his sleeve; the ebon skin and flowing indigo hair of Erision, facing the Unreality Effect for the first time; a familiar red-headed girl leaping from a building and gliding to safety on a parasail; DuQuesne staring up at the Skylark with his friend Richard Seaton; a tall, dark-haired figure in red and blue, streaking into the sky with a thought; her old virtual friend and first crush Tarellimade, staring through greenery at the woman he would one day marry; a blonde girl facing a monstrous vampire, wooden stake in her hand; Wu Kung, emerging from his sealed stone prison, startled to see a woman's face beneath the hat of a monk; and dozens, hundreds more, each a figure of legend large or small.

Then the impression of rage, of betrayal, and shadow was cast over the brilliance, and the sound was of screaming and fighting, guns and swords and fists in the dark, and more flashes of single scenes: the red and blue standing back-to-back with one wearing red, white, and blue and holding a shield; the gold-uniformed man standing straight, holding a salute, as in the screen before him a woman, dark-haired, wearing a beret and eyepatch, saluted him, and then Maria-Susanna, screaming as she held the gold-uniformed man's body; eighteen men, all different yet, somehow, all the same, poised for combat around a strange blue box.

And still more; four children in strange costumes fighting alongside an assortment of gray-skinned, orange-horned creatures that were, themselves, children, and the blood all around was purple, blue, green, brown, and even red; Wu Kung staggering forward, drugged and slow, to be beaten down to the ground; a tall, slender man sitting in a Victorian dressing-gown, immobile, waiting in a cluttered apartment with a strange pattern of bullet-holes on the wall, an apartment that suddenly disappeared, and in that moment the man raised a pistol he held in one hand…

Without warning they were back, the room now too bright, sterile and cold, and the glory and madness and anguish of those two decades compressed into moments almost brought her to her knees; she swayed and was caught by DuQuesne, whose face was white, with tears leaving shining streaks behind. "Not again," he was murmuring. "Not again." Nearby, Tunuvun was half-collapsed, his gaze flickering incredulously between Wu Kung and DuQuesne.

Wu Kung was standing now, shaking, glaring at Selpa and Byto; the Leader of the Vengeance had sagged to the floor, his legs vibrating, and the rhinoceros-like Byto uttered a gasp of disbelief and pain. "What do you say now, Vengeance-ones? What of my honor now?"

Trembling still, Selpa rose and then bobbed before Sun Wu Kung. "I... retract the implication." The translated voice was raw with horror, disbelief, revulsion. "You... your people... this was true?"

"Every last bit," DuQuesne said, voice rough. "And you didn't see the half of it."

"Do you understand?" the Arena asked.

"Yes," Byto spoke finally, with the same disbelieving horror in his voice. "These... people. They ... those were their native worlds. So whatever enhancements were made to them... were natural. By the Arena's own decrees, they retain all they were made with... for they did not know they were made, or even that there was another world in which they could have been made."

"Then do you withdraw the objection?"

Selpa rocked so his eyes stared full at DuQuesne and Wu Kung, horror still writ large in that pose. "Yes. It is withdrawn." The tilted gaze turned to her, and Selpa tightened with what had to be not merely horror but revulsion. Why?

Even as she asked the question, she understood. Because now he knows that we were capable of creating Hyperion. He knows just how far human beings can go even in their own system, against their own species.

"You will retain this knowledge, Selpa'A'At and Byto of the Vengeance, as well as you, Tunuvun of the Genasi, but you will be incapable of conveying this knowledge to any others. You will also recognize that none of those responsible for Hyperion are present, or likely to be present in the Arena."

"Understood." Selpa's voice was finally dropping to its normal controlled register; Byto echoed the agreement. Tunuvun simply bowed.

Instantly they were back in the amphitheatre. Once more the golden light cleared a path, and this time Ariane could see that a tall raised platform lay before them, with a stairway winding to the top. "Sun Wu Kung," the Arena intoned, "the objection has been withdrawn, your victory untainted and uncontested; step forward, and receive the prize."

That's right, she remembered. The selected champion claims the prize first.

Since the prize was an entire Sphere, she wasn't sure how this was going to be handed out; strong as Wu was, she suspected lifting twenty thousand kilometer-wide Spheres was a little out of his range.

The cheers had begun again as Wu Kung, once more proud and happy, stepped jauntily forward, barely keeping himself to a semi-dignified walk rather than the all-out sprint she could tell he would prefer. Strains of music echoed around them, a fanfare or tribute to a winner that while alien still managed to evoke a kinship with other, similar ceremonies on Earth, including her own experiences in the Winner's Circle back home.

Finally the four of them – Wu Kung, DuQuesne, herself, and Tunuvun – reached the top of the platform. A beam of pure white light touched Wu Kung as he stretched out a hand, and something glittered within, a something that floated steadily downward, sparkling like a jewel, until she could see that it was a perfect crystal sphere, with a white-glowing symbol within.

"You have won Racing Chance in Challenge, Sun Wu Kung, and thus the prize is yours. This token is yours. Whoever presents it to the Vengeance, they shall be given a Sphere and all the privileges of the Arena that are the right of every Citizen of the Arena."

Wu Kung caught the jewel and held it in wonder. "A Sphere…"

She saw DuQuesne stiffen.

"A Sphere that becomes a home," Wu murmured, staring at the sparkling crystal, enraptured. "DuQuesne! It could be... it could be our home!"

Oh, no. No, Wu. But she understood exactly what Wu Kung was thinking: a home for the Hyperions. Perhaps, just possibly, a home for their friends, too, the friends locked away as patterns in quantum states. Wu came from a place that believed in such miracles, and with the power of the Arena... was it entirely impossible?

And could anyone in Wu's position not be tempted – terribly tempted – by that possibility?

DuQuesne swallowed hard. "Yes. Yes, Wu. It could." She could tell that Marc did not dare push Wu Kung one way or the other. The Arena had given Wu Kung this treasure, and it was his, and his alone... and pushing Sun Wu Kung would probably end poorly anyway.

Tunuvun stood, rigid as steel, staring in mute fear. The Monkey King is also known for his caprice…

And then Wu grinned. "We have to get one for ourselves!" he shouted, and then tossed the priceless gemstone into the air, so it came down perfectly into a stunned Tunuvun's hands. "Now – we have a celebration!"

The cheers that erupted around them were nearly deafening, and a swarm of Genasi sprinted up the column and caught up Wu, lifting him high. "A celebration for our rights and our victory, Sun Wu Kung," Tunuvun said, and his translated voice was thick with near-tears of joy, "and for you, who gave it to us when we thought all lost. And you, who I now know never had a true home... You were my brother before, now you are brother to us all. You are Genasi now and forever, no matter what else you may be, and forever will our home be your home as well!"

Wu Kung laughed as they flung him high and caught him again. "Then I have gained many brothers and sisters today! A wonderful thing to celebrate!" He grinned down at the rest of them. "Time for a party!"

"Yes, Wu," she agreed, smiling her relief and echoing his excitement. "It is definitely time for a big party!"

 

 

Challenges of the Deeps: Chapter 10

Wu Kung was apparently in trouble...

-----

 

Chapter 10.

     Wu Kung landed in a crouch-and roll, came to his feet in the precise center of the platform, saw the figures – one Dujuin rhino-like creature, two Daalasan like armored frog-men, and one spidery Milluk in the silvery Arena armor – appear from nothing around him. Adjudicators! The Arena's own peacekeepers!

Then he heard Orphan's quiet despair, and rose to his feet, grinning savagely, baring his fangs to the Adjudicators as they raised their own weapons. "I gave my word to Tunuvun and Ariane that I would win this," he said, and his own speech echoed across the chamber and was repeated throughout the great amphitheatre beyond, its murmurs resonating back to his own ears. "And Sun Wu Kung has never broken his word!"

He leapt towards the Milluk, and suddenly felt as though the air itself had condensed, become a mud-thick sludge that dragged at his limbs. A trap, like the hidden swamp of Numachi no O, the Kappa King!

This would make it a challenge!

Now he dug deep into his reserves, feeling strength and speed flooding into him as he unleashed everything. DuQuesne said I didn't have to hold back! With a lunge he sped towards the Milluk, ducking under a bolt of energy from the Duijin and outdistancing the two Daaalasan. Two of the Milluk's legs crossed, blocking his strike, but the creature was driven back almost a full meter, approaching the edge of the suspended floor.

But the others were closing now, their weapons shimmering with energies he was sure were meant to stun and disable their foes on contact. But I still have Ruyi Jingu Bang!

He spun about, whirling the great red-enameled, gold-ended staff in a blur that made the speed of the Adjudicators sluggish, parrying strikes of three of the four. The fourth, a narrow-pointed trident, slid past his guard and hammered directly into his chest.

The impact was startling, a strength he hadn't felt in years except sparring with DuQuesne. These Adjudicators are good.

The field did not seem to impede him skidding across the floor, tumbling towards the opposite side, yet it did slow his arms as they extended out, as his feet's claws reached out and dug, and he saw drops of blood trailing in the air, slowly falling to his perceptions as he sought to stop his swift career towards the precipice. It works against me, and only against me.

Claws struck and gripped the platform surface, sending a shrill, ear-piercing shriek like a thousand nails drawn across a thousand blackboards, slowing his progress just enough. He rebounded from his crouch, met the two froglike Adjudicators halfway across the platform, moving through the impeding field as though it were thin air, and heard the gasps finally echoing from the unseen audience, the rustle of them slowly, slowly rising to their feet, leaning against the spectator rails, as they realized something extraordinary was playing out before them.

In the distance he could hear feet running, closing in, and knew that he didn't have long before Tunuvun arrived.

Ruyi Jingu Bang ducked down and then up, clotheslining both Daalasan beneath their armored chins. Wu Kung pressed forward, the impact and Wu's strength tearing the two Adjudicators from their feet, dragging them forward with the Hyperion Monkey King and forcing both the Milluk and the Dujuin to brace for collision. Wu braked, flipped up, and came down, aiming a blow for a precise point on the Milluk's armor. If I guess its anatomy right…

The creature tried to turn, even as it fended off the momentarily incapacitated Daalasan, but it was just one hair too slow. The golden ball on the end of the Monkey King's staff crashed into its armored carapace with enough force to dent both the armor and the golden ball – a ball made of ring-carbon composite. The creature spasmed, legs clenching inward like a stunned spider, and fell, rolling back and plummeting into the unguessable void below.

Now Wu Kung faced the three remaining Adjudicators and matched staff and feet and fists with their weapons, limbs, and armor. A blaze of blue energy from a silver bludgeon made his limbs momentarily seize up, and the Duijin took the opening, grabbed him, slammed him with groundshaking force into the shining platform, then lifted him to hurl him into space.

But Wu Kung's tail seized the rhinoceros-like head about the neck, used the power of its own throw to jerk it savagely forward, then Wu flipped around and used a double-heel kick to send it spinning helplessly into the void.

Two left, and these worked as a team, taking him deadly seriously; he could smell they knew these victories were no flukes, no lucky accidents; disbelief rose high, almost as high as determination in their scents, disbelief that he could move as he did in their field of solidified air. Tunuvun's footsteps were closer now, approaching the entrance and the final path to victory.

The Daalasan pursued him relentlessly, pushing their own speed and strength – obviously boosted by the Arena – to match his own. But strength and speed were only as good as the skill to use them, and was he not Sun Wu Kung, the Great Sage Equal of Heaven? Wu laughed, laughed at the sheer joy of finally, finally finding an opponent in this world to test him to the limits, even as the two at last passed his guard with sheer determination and strength to momentarily match his skill and guile, striking his head with force enough to snap it around, blood spraying from his mouth, pain shocking, hot and urgent as the footsteps that were approaching above.

But he tumbled away, a fall turned into a handspring, a lightning-fast succession of somersaulting leaps that sent him springing into space, rebounding off the far wall, and diving back, bouncing from the floor to sweep one froglike creature's feet from beneath it and then grappling with the other, gritting his teeth and ignoring the shocking pain as he grasped the energy-charged staff and tore it from the Adjudicator's shocked grasp, hurled it away, and then sent the third Adjudicator plummeting after his weapon.

Above, Tunuvun's feet were on the final path, sprinting at full speed across the gap, as Wu faced the last Adjudicator. With none of his allies to concern him, the Daalasan unleashed a torrent of electrical bolts, a network of destruction and shock that should be impassable, invincible.

But Wu could see the writhing of the bolts, follow the Daalasan's intent, his weaving of his tapestry of thunderbolts, and duck under one, leapt through a hole, brushed off the cramping shock of one bolt, and brought down Ruyi Jingu Bang to be parried at the last second by the wide-eyed Adjudicator. The roar of the crowd, distant though it was, was still nigh-deafening, and Wu strained to hear the final footsteps above, charging hopelessly towards the goal that honor demanded Tunuvun reach and his people prayed he would not.

Five seconds, he thought as a machine-gun fast exchange of staves ringing against each other sent both of them staggering back for an instant. Four seconds, and the Adjudicator fired a wide-bore blast of force that would have sent Wu hurtling away into space had he not read that motion at the last possible moment, tumbled to the side. Three, and he retaliated, knocked the Adjudicator's staff aside and rammed his elbow home at a point just below the throat that stunned the creature. Two seconds, and the Adjudicator tumbled limply away and slid over the edge as Wu Kung turned, judging distances, seeing Tunuvun only a scant few meters from the far doorway and the finish line.

One second, and the crowd had gone silent, breaths and movements, even thoughts being held as the final moment of the race had come; Wu shouted the command, and Ruyi Jingu Bang extended, doubling its length in the blink of an eye, catapulting him up to the doorway at the very instant Tunuvun reached his, and past it, over, through, breaking the white-sparkling line of victory.

 

 

 

Challenges of the Deeps: Chapter 9

Time to look in on DuQuesne and see how he's doing...

-----

 

Chapter 9.

     "Draw two," DuQuesne said, evaluating his cards. Nothing impressive in this hand. I need a break.

The two cards passed to him turned out to be a Sky Gate and a Nexus Gateway. With the Inner Gateway and Outer Gate I have, that at least makes a decent run. "Bet 5 points," he said, not without trepidation. That's half of what I've got left.

He could see Orphan, absently stroking his high head-crest in a nervous fashion, sitting near Ariane; Laila Canning sat on his other side, with Simon on Ariane's left. The Players themselves were in the center of a large circular amphitheatre – maybe even the same one that Ariane and Amas-Garao had dueled in – and around them was a ghostly image of the racing course.

Unlike the racers, DuQuesne could also see inside the huge final building, which contained a winding maze which was at least three kilometers long – a lot more of the race than the building's external appearance would imply. Have to mention that to Wu – without being specific, of course.

"Match five points," Byto said in his gravelly, deep voice. "Rolling draw die."

The eight-sided die rattled across the table, to come up with a single-line symbol. Damn! That's the fourth time!

"Line of Transition," the Arena announced. "Accrue two more Obstacle points and may draw up to three cards."

Byto's gained points almost every play so far, and I've barely stayed even. DuQuesne saw his opponent choose to take three cards. At least that means his hand wasn't that strong –

The twitch Byto gave was incredibly subtle, but DuQuesne's Hyperion-built senses picked up on it. Damn. He's got something now. As he'd delved deeper into the game, it had become clear it was indeed more like a mash-up of three or four games, ranging from standard poker to collectible card duel games, but that wasn't really helping. There were more ways to win, or lose, and different types of winning plays or hands.

Wu Kung and Tunuvun were dashing through the forest now, the Genasi racer considerably ahead of Wu – and, DuQuesne saw, was taking advantage of the lead to drop large tree branches across his competitor's path. If my luck doesn't turn…

He rolled the Draw die; it came up as Emergent, which at least let him draw three like his opponent. He decided to only take two. Okay, that makes a Gateway run and Dual Shadeweavers, that's not a bad hand. Still... "Bet three points."

Byto rocked his head from side to side, rolled, drew two cards, discarded two into the dump, and matched the bet, spreading out his cards. DuQuesne also saw him muttering instructions to Tunuvun. Can't hear them, of course, any more than he can hear what I say to Wu.

Huh. I don't see any triples or doubles, or a run of…

The murmuring from the crowd started just before it dawned on DuQuesne. "Hand of Arena," the Arena announced. Every one of Byto's cards was different, and represented one of the major facets of the Arena, including the Arena card itself as the high card. It was technically a losing hand in Arena Challenge – but in a Racing Challenge such a hand gained the player twenty Obstacle points. Since the total bet on the hand by Byto had been eight points, this was a big win overall for him.

On the positive side, DuQuesne was at least now up by eight points, and it would also be his turn first on this play. Still... "Wu," he said.

"Yes, DuQuesne?"

"Open it up just a hair. You're way back and it's not getting any easier from here on out. By the way, the course in that building is a lot bigger than it looks." That should be sufficiently nonspecific.

Apparently he was right, because the Arena said nothing, as Wu answered, "Okay, I'm stretching my legs a little. But only a little, right?"

"Right. Not quite ready to hit the panic button."

 

The murmurs rippled around the stadium again, with Ariane showing a hint of a smile instead of concern as Wu Kung raced along the branches of the network-like trees, ducking under the branches to evade the obstacles Tunuvun had dropped. He was closing the distance, slowly but surely, between him and his opponent.

DuQuesne and Byto finished the next play as Wu Kung burst from the forest and began racing across gray-golden desert sands, pursuing the faint dust trail that showed where Tunuvun was scrambling like a lizard ahead of him. "I'm getting closer, DuQuesne. Two hundred thirty meters, I think. Still keep going at this speed?" Wu didn't even sound winded yet, which – if anyone other than DuQuesne could have heard it – might have been a dead giveaway about how much Wu was holding back.

"Throttle it back just a hair, to the top we agreed on before. You'll still catch him about the time you guys hit the water, I think."

This time Byto obviously thought he had something, but DuQuesne knew he had a major hand, too. Arena card for me. Only two in circulation, and the one he had is still going to be in the dump, but more importantly I've got three Faction Leader cards – and not small ones, either. Vengeance, Molothos, and Blessed-- only two of each of those in circulation, too. The Arena can be counted as a Faction, a Construct, or a Leader, so that gives me almost a Great Leader Run, which is something close to a Royal Straight Flush. Plus with two Spheres in my show cards and the single Sphere in my hand I've got a triple.

"Bet eight," he said. Byto matched him without a pause, rolled, got to draw one card. Again Byto tensed in that way that signaled he thought he had something big. But by now he might guess I've started reading him and be trying to use his tell to throw me off. Hard to know if he realizes what his tell is; maybe no one but a Hyperion would notice it.

Byto glanced up, then nodded. "Bet eight."

Ow. That's a big bite. Must be confident. DuQuesne wasn't going to yield this one that easily, so he matched and rolled the die. Ha! Finally luck's turning my way! Line of Transition for me. Two more points and I get to draw up to three. Real good chance of drawing at least some Faction Leader in that, even if not a Great Faction. Time for me to make up some ground too. "Draw three."

Staring at him from the middle of the two new cards was Faction Leader: Tantimorcan. Not all Great Factions, but definitely a very high Leader Run... and I've got another Sphere, too! He dumped one of the draw cards – a Sky Gate – and also dumped the Challenge card from his show cards, replacing it with the Tantimorcan Leader card. I've got sixteen points left. This is a huge hand, though. "Bet ten."

Byto looked up at him, expression on the rhinocerous-like face unreadable. "Match and increase six."

That's the most allowed – he can't raise beyond what I can match! "Are you sure you want to do that, Byto?" he asked, levelly.

The other hesitated only a fraction, then waggled his ears in what was clearly assent. "Match and increase six."

Too late to bail now. Okay, that's the sunk cost fallacy, but still... "Match with six. Beat this: Leader Run, Arena high, and a Quadruple Sphere," he said, laying down his cards.

Murmurs chased themselves around the audience; Byto sat back slightly, surprised. "Indeed an impressive hand," he said. "And an interesting coincidence." He spread out his hand. "Great Leader Run, with Quadruple Challenges."

DuQuesne stared in momentary shock. He couldn't even think of an appropriate curse as his count of Obstacle Points went to zero. Out of the corner of his eye, he noted that Orphan looked, if anything, more shocked. Wonder why that is. Probably the whole improbability of the thing; chances of both of us getting all those same cards is ridiculously low. But this is really bad; I'm broke and he's thirty-two points up in one play. "Arena, I need my first stake," he said, and saw ten points appear in his account.

I've really got to win the next plays. At least I've got a good read on his style, his tells – I don't think he knows I can read them – and I know what's in the dump and how fast it recirculates. There's still time.

But Wu, nearing the edge of the desert, suddenly vanished into the sand. "DuQuesne! Dry quicksand! This really annoys me!" The image showed Wu now effectively swimming through the sand, looking for an edge where it turned solid enough to burrow upwards. Ordinary human wouldn't stand a chance, really, but Wu and Tunuvun ain't ordinary in any sense of the word. Still, that was dead-slow movement compared to Tunuvun, who was now speeding through the water part of the course, his tail lashing back and forth and helping propel him rapidly through the water. Looks like... it is! That damn tail actually shifted shape, it's got fins top and bottom!

That was going to be too much of a pain. DuQuesne used all ten of his points to have a bunch of predators converge on Tunuvun, letting the Arena give him another ten stake. If I lose so badly again that I need the third stake, it's not going to matter much that I used up the first this way.

Wu burst from the sands and dove into the water ten seconds before Tunuvun finished dispatching his adversaries. Wu had only lost thirty meters, but it was clear he was going to lose more for the rest of the swim; Tunuvun was just too well adapted for swimming. "DuQuesne…" Wu murmured pleadingly.

"Just a bit. Like you did before."

That didn't completely keep him from losing ground, but once they hit the second no-gravity section Wu started eating up the space between the two... until an unexpected flurry of zikki intercepted him in mid-leap. Wu managed to beat them down with his staff and claws (since no inter-competitor combat was allowed, apparently the Arena didn't object to either Wu's staff or the chain-link belts that Tunuvun wore), but by that time Tunuvun was scrambling across the ice and tundra, seven hundred meters and more ahead of Wu.

And it kept happening. Every good hand DuQuesne got, somehow Byto had a better one. He couldn't bluff or trick his opponent. Reading a guy's tells doesn't help much when all it tells you is that he's going to hand you your head on a platter.

At the same time – ominously – Byto had stopped throwing obstacles at Wu. Wu was slowly making up ground, but by that time it was looking very grim. Wu was almost a full kilometer back and the two were toiling their way across the badlands, with Tunuvun – wearing a desperately focused, yet despairing expression – about to enter the immense building for the final stretch.

"I am very much afraid," he heard Orphan say, "that our friend is going to lose."

DuQuesne looked up, and finally grinned. "That would be a really bad bet to make." He lowered his voice – even though he didn't need to. "Wu, this guy's kicking my ass, luck's on his side every moment. So it's time to stop playing around."

"You mean it?" He heard the excited tension in his friend's voice, and chuckled.

"I mean it, Wu. Go, Wu, GO! Go all-out and show them what Sun Wu Kung can do!"

Wu laughed aloud with delight, and there was suddenly a murmur, a rumble, a roar from the crowd, an outcry of stunned disbelief as the Hyperion Monkey King tore his way across the remaining badlands at a speed that made Tunuvun seem to be standing still. Ariane's jaw dropped, and then she began clapping furiously, the other members of Humanity joining her.

Byto made a noise that DuQuesne was sure was something obscene, then turned his head to his cards.

But, DuQuesne noticed with concern, he still did not call for a single obstacle.

The building-maze was now visible to everyone, and Tunuvun sped through corridors, along perilous cables suspended over drops, through narrow tunnels, always at speeds to put a human runner to shame. But behind him Wu Kung burst through the entrance and ran so fast that as he turned a corner of a corridor he was running on the wall, then bounding back and forth between the walls enclosing an otherwise empty space, spurning the tightrope there as too trivially easy, satisfying the Arena's requirements by constantly re-crossing the path of green sparks.

DuQuesne made another play, lost, saw his last stake appear in his account. I have no idea how many points Byto has now. He heard an incomprehensible mutter, saw Tunuvun stiffen and redouble his efforts, leaping from isolated pillar to pillar in yet another room; but halfway across, Wu Kung streaked into view, jumping not from one pillar to the next but clearing half a dozen pillars in a single impossible jump, then another and another, passing Tunuvun as both reached the far side of the room.

The Genasi leaned forward and, somehow, wrung another burst of speed from what had seemed to be his ultimate effort, but he was still falling behind at a ludicrous pace. Wu was ahead by a hundred meters, two hundred, four hundred, outdistancing his opponent effortlessly, closing in on the final room: a huge cylindrical room, two hundred meters across with two narrow golden paths leading to the white-sparkling finish line; twenty meters below the paths was a circular platform a hundred fifty meters across, and below that the room dropped away immeasurably.

And then he heard Byto say "Arena, I request my first stake."

Holy Mother of God. That means he's just –

As Wu Kung entered and began the final sprint, the golden path dissolved beneath him, sending him plummeting to the flat, silvery platform below. Even as he struck, four shapes materialized at the cardinal points of the circular floor, four shapes clad in unmistakable armor: Adjudicators.

"We have lost," Orphan said quietly.