by Ryk E. Spoor
They passed through a sparkling mist, and DuQuesne heard faint tinkling sounds and possibly the slightest shift in engine noise. “That’s . . . air plankton, right?”
“One of many varieties, yes.”
He looked at Ariane, whose eyes showed the narrowing he expected. “I start to see even more differences for navigation and combat in the Arena.”
“Hm?” Orphan’s wingcases scissored for a moment, and abruptly he gave a handtap. “Oh, indeed, Doctor DuQuesne. In an ordinary atmosphere and gravity, such materials would not remain long suspended. Here, with air currents upwelling and descending, gravity shifting, the air of the Arena is often filled with everything from ordinary mists to clouds of silica-armored chimemotes.” He laughed. “Oh, yes, much different from what you will encounter on either a normal-space world or the deepness of space.”
“Eliminates one of the most basic principles of space combat,” murmured Ariane. “The idea that you can run, but you can’t hide.”
“And without AI-level automation, the old Mark I Eyeball plus telescopes is back to being important,” DuQuesne agreed. “Radar’s got limits in atmosphere—back home, you couldn’t get a straight line through significant atmosphere longer than a hundred kilometers or so, unless you were trying to transmit through a gas giant. Add in random wandering animals, floating silica-covered plankton, drifting water-ponds like the one you saw in your race with Sethrik? No one modality will be very good at any great distance, and because the Arena seems to give us some kind of cheat to see longer distances, visible light seems to be the best bet. And,” he grinned as a pale green-tinted mist streamed by, “with all this crap around, hiding gets a lot easier.”
“You grasp the issues well. Yes, battles in the skies of the Arena are often matters of stealth, ambush, and quick response to surprises.”
“I do recall wondering about things I had heard in Nexus Arena about what sounded like . . . pirates,” Laila said. “Is that common?”
“In some areas, I am afraid, yes. Much commerce of various types travels through Sky Gates, but many areas do not have direct connections to Nexus Arena; so there are shipping lanes of various convenience and distance . . . and safety . . . and travellers from one point to another may have to be wary of those who might seek to relieve them of their valuables, including their ships.” Orphan looked over to DuQuesne and Ariane. “Now, we do have some hours left to fly, even after the tour—and I thank you for your patience on that tour.”
“No need to thank us,” Ariane said quickly. “It was fascinating.”
“Thank you. In any event—I would suggest that we get some rest and then eat, and return here when we are nearing the proper area. I am sure we all want to be fully alert during the transition and arrival.”
“Sounds reasonable to me,” DuQuesne said, and the others agreed. Orphan had already shown them the cabins prepared for human use, so DuQuesne was able to find one and lie down on the prepared bed—slightly harder than he was used to.
Practiced as he was at resting when time allowed, he simply fell to sleep and woke up a few hours later, and made his way to the dining area Orphan had also shown them on the tour.
Orphan was already there, with several variously-shaped fruits which were the food he obviously preferred. “Ah, Doctor DuQuesne. I expected you would be the first.”
“Yeah, I didn’t feel like that much sleep.” He saw a fair assortment of human-compatible food on a side table, including what appeared to be a loaf of bread. Not a type we usually stock. Wonder where that came from? “How much longer?”
“Until we reach the rough area, you mean? About an hour and a half.” He sipped from one of the fruits with the extensible tube that was usually concealed in his mouth. “Now that you have brought up the subject, I was wondering—how will we pinpoint the Sky Gate? I presume you did not leave a marker.”
“Nope,” DuQuesne said. “Don’t worry, I’ll be able to guide you.”
Orphan sighed, but the impression was more of a distinct smile. “Ahh, you will reveal the secret at the appropriate time.”
The others filtered in over the next several minutes, and most of the food disappeared rapidly. Shortly, they were all back on the bridge of Zounin-Ginjou.
“All right, Doctor DuQuesne,” Orphan said. “We are now well outside of the gravity band and in the region I would expect Sky Gates to be found.”
“First, I want you to check real well to see if anyone’s followed us.”
“An excellent thought. Direct your attention to the main window.” The window shimmered, became a display screen. “There. Now, we will scan. All of us should watch—automation is well and good, but living eyes are vastly better.”
Orphan used radar, visible light, and infrared to make multiple scans of the area; DuQuesne studied every readout carefully, but saw nothing that tripped his paranoia, and for the most part neither did anyone else. Aside from a few false alarms which Orphan identified positively as living creatures, not vessels, there was no sign of anything in their area or within sensing range. “And I will say that I have spared no expense in the scanning equipment on Zounin-Ginjou, so I am confident we are not at present being watched—save, perhaps, by Shadeweavers or Faith, but for that there is little remedy.”
“Okay, then.” Marc took out a camera and plugged it into his headware data feed. “Gimme the window view back, and point us down at Nexus Arena.”
“Oh, most clever. Of course, the simplest ways are still best.”
“Motion-based triangulation,” Ariane said approvingly. DuQuesne had loaded the image recordings from the probe into his headware, and using a similar view and the movement of Zounin-Ginjou, he was quickly able to zero in on where their ship would have to move to in order to duplicate that view.
A few minutes later, he unplugged the camera and put it away. He could keep the calculations updating internally now. “Over that way. Lemme see . . .” he looked at the controls again. “Turn the ship . . . I make it a quarter-circle to the starboard side, and come up three point six degrees—that’s a hundredth of a circle.”
“And how far?”
“How large are these Sky Gates? That is, how close do you have to be to their center to use them?”
“Quite close—they are perhaps two hundred meters across—although objects of effectively any size may pass through.”
“Okay. Then . . . about four hundred kilometers.”
“Very close. Excellent. We shall be there in twenty minutes or so.”
The bow of Zounin-Ginjou was now no longer pointing towards Nexus Arena, which made the view less interesting in the sense that you couldn’t actually be sure you were moving except when something drifting in the sky went by you. Laila was off at a side port, staring at something, but other than that everyone waited mostly quietly.
Abruptly Orphan leaned forward. “Ah! There it is, I can detect it now. Prepare for activation.”
The huge ship slowed drastically; Marc noted that while they could feel acceleration, deceleration, and turns, it was not nearly as strong as those sensations should be. And that’s a major advantage in piloting such a ship. You get the tactile feedback without the possibility of being immobilized or injured by acceleration and turns.
“Activating in three . . . two . . . one . . .”
The swift burn of light streaked down Zounin-Ginjou, seeming to erase the ship as it came, then blotting out everything else.
The light of a Sandrisson Jump faded, and before them was . . .
Marc C. DuQuesne found himself slowly stepping forward, staring. Every time I think I’m getting used to the Arena, I realize I haven’t even started down that road.
Humanity’s Sphere lay ahead and below, covering a sixth of the entire sky even from twenty thousand kilometers away. The Upper Sphere looked almost like Earth, with swirling clouds, land of green and brown, and sparkling blue of oceans. The central point—where, Marc knew, the Outer Gateway was located—was high on one continent, rough
ly oval-shaped, which was bracketed by two others in what would equate to the north and south. All of them were surrounded by the gleaming blue sea, with white areas in the effective pole regions.
At this range, it was just the merest sparkling at the edge, but he could see that along the bulwark that marked the effective end of the Upper Sphere, the great ocean did in fact overflow its bounds; a mighty cataract—perhaps more than one—leapt from the edge of the world and plunged down, to douse part of the Sphere or simply vanish into endless space.
But all of that—the entirety of a world’s surface—was merely the top, a skullcap on a Sphere large enough to house the entire Earth easily within, and above it floated a huge, blazing sphere of light.
Orphan was nodding at their expressions. “Nexus Arena is impressive in its size; but to see a living world, continents spread out like a page on a book, held atop a Sphere larger than your home planet . . . truly, there are no words, are there?”
Ariane looked up at him. “Does it still . . . touch you, to see it?”
An emphatic handtap. “My friends, it is true that we can grow used to most things. But on any day that I truly think about what I see, I cannot help but be both awed and overjoyed—and, perhaps, sometimes, terrified—by what the Arena shows me. And when I see the wonder on your faces, I see it once more in the way I did when I, too, first looked down upon the Arena’s majesty, and I am humbled and challenged by it as well.”
For a few moments they stared. Then Zounin-Ginjou quivered and lurched downward.
“Ah! We enter the gravity field. Take your seats, if you will,” Orphan said. “Now that we have arrived—now that I know your home—we shall allow those who cannot remain to return, and bring aboard the good Doctor Sandrisson.” The huge ship rumbled to full life and came around, pointing directly at the Outer Gateway, hidden on the peaks of the world. “In but a week or two, my friends, these skies will no longer be so empty!”
CHAPTER 28
“So, Captain Austin, how do you find the Arena, now that you have returned and had some time to accustom yourself?”
Ariane felt that she did quite well not to visibly jump at the deep, sonorous voice that she associated with the most severe beating she had ever taken. True, she’d emerged victorious, but despite that great and dramatic victory, what she remembered most about her battle with Amas-Garao was the feeling of being utterly outmatched; even the few times she’d managed to strike him, she’d felt like a child kicking an adult in the shin. I got ridiculously lucky—humanity got ridiculously lucky—but I’m not stupid enough to think I could beat him a second time.
Wu, she was pleased to see, had moved with startling speed and, despite Amas-Garao apparently having materialized from thin air nearby, had inserted himself between the Shadeweaver and Ariane.
“Well enough, Amas-Garao. Do you people have something against just walking like the rest of us, or is there a reason for you trying to make me jump out of my skin every time you show up?”
The low, rippling chuckle she remembered rolled out. “Jump out of your skin? A most . . . interesting expression, that. The mystique of the Shadeweavers is enhanced by our being seen only infrequently acting as the other inhabitants of the Arena will act. I am sure you understand.” The cowled face turned slightly towards Wu Kung. “I notice that you have found yourself a most formidable bodyguard. Wise. Am I right to suspect it was Doctor DuQuesne who convinced you to have one?”
“More like told me I was and said he’d chosen Wu for the job,” she said, continuing her walk along the Grand Arcade. One advantage of having a Shadeweaver with you on a walk is that no one gets in your way. The crowds parted before them like water in front of a battleship’s prow; where most people in the crowded parts of the Grand Arcade might be practically rubbing elbows (or the equivalent), Ariane, Wu, and Amas-Garao had between two and three meters clearance, all the way around. “You say ‘wise.’ Do you know something I don’t?”
“I undoubtedly know uncounted things you do not, Ariane Austin,” the Shadeweaver answered, ironic humor in his voice. “Yet in this case I have no concrete evidence of a specific threat. It is simply wise to assume there is such a threat, especially when you are so visible a presence in the Arena, and one who has scattered many boxes indeed during her entry.”
Ariane made a guess at what that expression meant. “I think you might exaggerate things a bit—dramatics being your stock in trade, of course.”
“A bit, yes. Yet it is perhaps not clear to you how widely you are known, and how far your influence has already reached.” The clawed, black-furred hand pointed at the soaring, straight-edged lines of the Faction House of the Blessed To Serve. “To give a single example of many; when you arrived, the Blessed had eradicated or turned most of the allies gathered by the Liberated. They had arranged to trap Orphan twice, and each time he had just barely escaped. Even when you first appeared, the fact that he had managed to ally himself with First Emergents caused more amusement than anything else.
“And then two of you defeated a Molothos scout force, winning your citizenship to the Arena in unprecedented time.”
“Was it?”
A faint gleam of white teeth; Amas-Garao’s species did smile somewhat as did humanity, though the face beneath that hood would make a smile look like a threat of death. “Utterly unprecedented, Ariane Austin. In mere days you had gone from the naïve newcomers to true citizenship; others took years, some have waited centuries or more. This meant that the reputation of the Survivor,” by which Ariane knew he meant Orphan, “went up by association. The Blessed’s attempt to ruin this budding partnership . . . did not go well, as you know, and instead boosted your reputation. The Liberated suddenly had a visible and proud ally, and built mightily on that new visibility.
“And then, of course, you defeated me,” he bowed to her, “in what I will not deny was one of the most utterly unexpected and spectacular victories I have ever been privileged to witness. Prior to leaving, you managed to evade, without Challenge, a most clever gambit by the Molothos.
“So in your few months here, your species has insulted and humiliated the Molothos—and thus far gotten away with it, despite being a single newly-emerged world; chosen an outcast and schemer as an ally, and benefited from it; humiliated the Blessed To Serve; and publicly humiliated the Shadeweavers themselves. While still but one person, the Liberated’s power and influence have drastically increased due to the association; the Blessed have lost allies and prestige, for much more rides on each Challenge than the overt prizes for the victor; the Shadeweavers have found their mystique weakened, others viewing us for the first time in many millennia as less than invincible; and your little species, and you in particular, are now known and spoken of by every race of beings in the Arena, on worlds so far distant from your own that by the time the light from their stars reaches yours, your own will have died and dwindled to a cinder.”
She admitted that, laid out that way, it did sound awfully impressive, even if she knew how much panic, desperation, luck, and prayer had been involved. “So did you come here to tell me how awesome I am, or did you have a purpose?”
The eyes gleamed yellow for a moment within the cowl, and she heard him chuckle again. She noticed that Wu was walking tensely; he obviously didn’t feel comfortable around the Shadeweaver. “I did, in fact, Captain. You are of course aware that the Shadeweavers are not a Faction in the same sense as most others?”
She nodded. “You aren’t all required to be united, don’t have any actual leader, things like that. In some ways you’re more like the Powerbrokers than the regular Factions.”
“A reasonable analogy; and you of course recall that Gona-Brashind and I had some . . . differences of policy which would not have been seen with most Factions. That said, we do engage in many of the same activities of most other Factions, including recruiting.”
Ariane felt her gut tighten. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess. Maria-Susanna.”
“Correct in a sin
gle guess, Captain Austin. Yes. She has been discussing the potential of an apprenticeship with us as one of her choices.”
Goddamn. Ariane gritted her teeth, even as she saw Wu’s momentarily sad expression. Could there be any worse choice for us than for her to become a Shadeweaver?
Still, there were the limitations . . . but she had to be somewhat cautious. They had come to a lot of conclusions about the way the Faith and Shadeweavers worked, but a lot of it was guesswork and none of it was public knowledge. She didn’t want to reveal too much to them. “If she . . . chooses that path, how long would it take for her to become an actual Shadeweaver?”
“It entirely depends on the apprentice, how well they learn what we have to teach, and of course when one of our number retires,” Amas-Garao answered. “For a number of reasons, we generally do not allow our numbers to expand, so only when one retires—or on very rare occasion dies—will one of the apprentices become a full Shadeweaver.”
“So a retired Shadeweaver is forbidden from using his abilities?”
“Not precisely. We pass our powers on, when that time comes. So once I, for example, step down, I will no longer be a Shadeweaver.”
She raised an eyebrow. “And you will do this? Pardon me for saying so, but I find it hard to imagine someone giving up that power.”
“It is one of the greatest demands—and the final test—of our worthiness, Captain Austin,” Amas-Garao said, and his voice was solemn, without a trace of irony or evasion. “I know that your experiences with our order, and especially with myself, do not lend themselves to making us appear in any way noble, but there are very ancient traditions, usages, and requirements that are part of being a Shadeweaver. Our people have much freedom of action, much ability to do that which other beings cannot; we can pass from place to place as we will, and even the Arena cannot entirely bar us. We wield powers no others save, perhaps, the Faith can understand, and can shape matter and energy to our desire. We can touch the minds of others and understand their will, even bend it—as you know—to a direction that we find more pleasing. We can even hold off death, refuse it, for many years. We have shattered fleets and moved Spheres, begun wars and stopped them. Where walks a Shadeweaver walks the power of the universe made manifest.