Spheres of Influence

by Ryk E. Spoor

  He wondered if Sanzo were still awake, back in the other world, in the universe of simulation that was to him as real as this Arena. Did they shut off the simulation when I left, freeze the world? Or is she putting Gen to bed now, saying a prayer for me? Is Sha Wujing watching over them for me, or just sitting beneath his waterfall, training, waiting for me to unlock the riddle of reality with my fists?

  One more grip, the roar of the wind so loud he no longer heard anything, just felt the shrieking, screaming, rumbling of the demon wind in his bones, clawing at what little skin remained exposed with immaterial talons of fire and ice. Pull! Pull forward!

  The wind suddenly wavered, felt disrupted, uneasy, shifting so that he was nearly pulled from the hull of Thilomon. Desperately he lunged forward, sinking all his claws deep into the resilient coating, and suddenly he realized the wind was weaker.

  He was just in the lee of one of the moving sections. It was only raised a short distance, but just high enough that he could crouch, flat to the hull, behind it, and the wind now screamed mostly over him, not trying to tear its way through.

  Now I have to hold on, hold on until it slows down . . . it has to slow down sometime . . .

  But the roaring, raging wind went on, and on, and on. He held tight, grim, unrelenting, but the wind was tireless. It could continue forever, and it did. He held on, but he could not see where they were going, or how far they had come. The wind tore at him, gripped and yanked and pulled, sometimes almost teasing at the edges of his hood. Other things hissed and rattled against his clothing, some of the sky-plankton DuQuesne had mentioned. He thought, at moments, that he heard voices in that wind, some screaming curses and imprecations, others playful, asking him to let go, come play!

  I can’t go play. I can’t let go. I can’t ever let go.

  Arms and hands which had almost never known fatigue, could not truly remember being tested, began to throb with the dull ache of weariness. His fingertips hurt, the claws themselves transmitting vibration and stress through his body. Can’t let go. He repeated that to himself, focusing on Ariane, on his promise, on his life, on the few things that really mattered. Can’t let go.

  Can’t let go.

  Can’t ever let go.

  He did not let go. He held on, held when the ache in his hands became agony, when heat and chill threatened to rob him of endurance, held through the battering of wind and the turns of Thilomon as it travelled some unguessable distance in the endless sky. He held on. He did not let go.

  The world suddenly blazed with crystal-light that jolted him to the core of his being, and he felt a strange tingling go through him. That . . . that was a Sky Gate jump?

  The speed of the vessel was not slackening, and still he held on, through a sudden turbulence that would have loosened his grip had it been any less tight. We’ve come somewhere. They have a destination. They have to slow down sometime.

  Sun Wu Kung hung onto that thought desperately. They have to slow down. This is a ship. It will go somewhere, and it will stop.

  But for the first time in his life, he really wondered if he could last long enough to see the end of a journey. His arms and hands and feet and legs felt like they were on fire, were cramping and threatening to fail in their grip even against the drive of his iron-held will. No! I mustn’t! If I let go, they will have Ariane and no one will ever know, no one will be able to save her! I’m the only chance she has!

  And then the rainbow shockwave of light hit again. Another Gate . . . still in the Arena, had to be a Sky Gate . . . Good, I don’t think I’d like breathing vacuum . . .

  It took several moments for him to realize the wind’s scream was starting to reduce. He couldn’t believe it at first. But then he saw the bulwark ahead of him shifting. The wind increased slightly, but only because he was no longer sheltered.

  Clouds, he realized. We’re travelling through clouds. They’re slowing down because they can’t see everything.

  He cautiously straightened up, feeling his ungrateful muscles now trying to rebel because he dared shift his position. I can . . . handle this wind. It’s only about 300 kilometers an hour or so, I think. Fast, but not impossible with care. And still dropping.

  He patted his inside pockets, yanked out one of his high-energy snacks, stuffed it in his mouth, realizing as his jaws ached for a moment just how hungry he was. I must have been there for . . . hours!

  He crouched down again and ate the other two bars he had on hand. Need that strength later.

  Wu Kung straightened and looked around. After a moment, he spotted a squarish area that looked very much like the same kind of hatchway Ariane and Sethrik had gone into. That’s what I need!

  Carefully, he made his way across the hull towards the hatch. Don’t mess up when you’re that close to—

  Without warning, the hull rose up and slapped him like the hand of an angry Buddha—or maybe Kali on a real bad day!

  He realized he was flying . . . no, falling. Thilomon was receding, he was dropping down, down, farther, and then the ship disappeared as he fell into a roiling cloud.

  “NO! No, no no NO!”

  Almost he called for the clouds to support him, but he remembered that this was not Hyperion. The clouds would not support him. He could not summon the wind, or call forth the flames, or tear one of the pillars of the Dragon King’s palace out to serve as his staff.

  And he had failed.

  He fell, and fell, and sometimes the thunder roared around him like the laughter of the gods, mocking him. It was indeed a fine jest, worthy of the Generals of the Heavens, that he would be so close, have endured so much, only to be defeated just when it seemed victory was certain. He didn’t care. Ariane was gone, and no one would know she’d been kidnapped—and even if they did, they’d never know where to find her.

  Still he fell. The cloud was producing rain and he fell with the rain, trickling off him like a million tears, and he let himself cry. There seemed, for the moment, to be nothing else to do.

  But even grief could not go on forever, and as he felt the exhaustion of his frustration and sadness draping him in gloom, he remembered that DuQuesne had also begged him to live.

  And that giving up was not his way.

  “I . . . am still alive,” Wu said to himself. “I’m still alive, and if I’m alive, that means I’m not beaten forever.”

  He opened his mouth and worked to guide water in; he desperately needed some, he felt as though he’d been in the Desert of Souls for a week. Occasionally some sky-plankton thing went in too; they weren’t all that tasty, but he wasn’t too worried about poison. He was tough.

  Abruptly the darker space around him lightened, and he found himself tumbling through clearer air. He had fallen far enough that the Sphere he’d glimpsed vaguely as he fell from Thilomon had actually shifted its perspective.

  There was movement below him; circling, yet closing in, he saw it was a mob or school of several dozen creatures with armored torsos, grasping, armored tentacles, and flashes of nightmare mouths.

  Zikki, he realized. Predators fast and mean enough to have tried to attack small ships flying through their space.

  There were a lot of them. And they were closing in.

  He grinned finally, a smile savage and hungry, but a smile nonetheless, the first smile he’d had since Ariane had been kidnapped. He reached up and pulled his staff, Ruyi Jingu Bang, free. “Ha! You think you will make a meal of me! I will give you something to chew on, then!”

  He dove to meet the oncoming swarm.

  CHAPTER 33

  “Two gates,” DuQuesne said. “So we’re in the gap, now?”

  “Most certainly, Doctor DuQuesne,” Orphan said. “And we shall prepare to close the distance—and plan on catching them in the middle, with nowhere to flee.” He looked at both DuQuesne and Simon. “You have listened to my instructions on how to operate crucial systems of Zounin Ginjou, and I am sure you will . . . acquit yourselves well. But I hope you realize that this is still an unequal
contest.”

  Simon nodded, feeling tension mounting once more. “Yes, I think we do. Even if Zounin-Ginjou is superior to Thilomon, we cannot attack it all-out unless we are willing to possibly kill Ariane as well. We must fight to cripple Thilomon, while they will have no such compunction about us. That gives them a huge advantage.”

  “Well stated, Doctor Sandrisson,” Orphan agreed. “In addition, of course, there are but three of us and there will be many hundred Blessed aboard Thilomon. All the automation I could possibly make work is installed, but it simply is not going to make up for so many other eyes and minds at work. Fortunately,” he bowed in their direction, “Zounin-Ginjou is, in fact, superior to Thilomon in nearly every way, so it is possible that we can triumph. The odds are . . . not good, even by your apparently insane standards, but they are very much not zero.”

  “We haven’t been able to even see them for awhile, Orphan,” DuQuesne said, looking even more tense than Simon felt. “Can’t we get a view soon? I hate the idea that I can’t even be sure they’re there.”

  Orphan’s wings scissored. “Alas, Doctor DuQuesne, I had to make sure we were that far behind; the jumpflash would undoubtedly give us away if we were even remotely in viewing range.” Zounin-Ginjou rumbled more loudly. “But here we can accelerate. We will still try to remain unnoticed, but this is the region in which we desire battle to be joined, so I am slightly less concerned.” He glanced back. “Of course, it is also possible that we could run into something while trying to catch them. There is an excellent reason that those travelling between Spheres move vastly more slowly than one might expect.”

  I don’t doubt it, Simon thought. He remembered Ariane’s race against Sethrik; clouds could hide gargantuan creatures like the vanthume, or floating lakes, or even pseudo-planets, accretions of stone and earth shed from uncountable spheres and accumulating in the deeps between. But we have to take risks now.

  Simon and DuQuesne glued themselves to forward viewing instruments, scanning the heavens. We can’t use radar, unfortunately, because we’re trying to hide. Still . . . that doesn’t mean that they won’t . . .

  He picked up the signal almost immediately. “Marc, Orphan, there’s a radar source up ahead, about five thousand kilometers. It’s attenuated but clearly there.”

  “Let me see . . . ah, yes, that must be Thilomon; the pulse pattern is very characteristic of Blessed vessels.” Now aware of his quarry’s location, Orphan shifted the direction of the vessel and accelerated. “Prepare yourselves, my friends.”

  Slowly the rose-purple mists in front of them cleared; a tiny dot appeared in the distance, and optical and electronic magnification showed clearly that it was, indeed, Thilomon.

  Suddenly, Simon noticed a portion of Thilomon’s hull snap outward, then close. “What in the world was that?”

  “I confess, I do not know. There was no maneuver underway which would involve the guide sails, and in any case that was—”

  DuQuesne suddenly swore loudly. “Those sons of—they just gave Wu the boot.”

  Simon felt as though ice water had drenched him. He liked the energetic Hyperion Monkey King. “How can you be sure?”

  “Sure? I can’t be a hundred percent sure, but that’s exactly the kind of maneuver you’d use to remove some unwanted guest from your hull, and . . .” he squinted, “. . . and I think they had just entered the gravity field of that Sphere, which means that Wu wouldn’t just be tossed away, he’d fall and keep on falling for a long, long time. Orphan, we’ve got to—”

  The alien’s hand flicked outward in his “no” gesture. “Doctor DuQuesne, I dislike the thought of leaving anyone to drift between the Spheres. Understand that; I was once in that position myself, and there is no fate more isolating and fearsome.

  “Yet if we stop to try and find a single falling object within the vast spaces of the Arena, do you imagine we will succeed immediately?”

  “I . . .”

  “We are here to rescue Ariane Austin,” Orphan pushed on, and to Simon’s surprise there were anger and sympathy both in that voice. “If we stop to rescue Sun Wu Kung, then we will lose many hours, I will guarantee it, and the Blessed will be far beyond our reach.

  “Still, you are my friends—as is Ariane Austin. You tell me—should we continue on our mission, or stop to rescue Wu Kung?”

  DuQuesne glared at Orphan, huge fist upraised, and Simon waited nervously; he knew that DuQuesne was as . . . interested in Ariane as he was, but Sun Wu Kung was something older and probably just as important to DuQuesne.

  Abruptly DuQuesne dropped into his seat and slammed his hand against the console. “Damn! Damn you, you’re right, Orphan. He was a bodyguard. He wouldn’t ever forgive me for rescuing him before getting her back. We go on.”

  Orphan nodded, started to turn back towards his console.

  “But—”

  Orphan looked back.

  “But as soon as we have Ariane, we come back here, and we find Wu. If we have to spend half a year to do it. Understand?”

  The wingcases flared. “I understand and most certainly agree, Doctor DuQuesne.”

  Zounin-Ginjou moved forward more swiftly, still transmitting nothing, but gaining ground slowly but surely on the unsuspecting Thilomon. Orphan pointed out the key points on the target v;essel. “We wish to damage her engines. We do not want to damage the energy storage areas or the living quarters.”

  Simon nodded. Room-temperature superconductor loop batteries are the usual means of energy storage. If you damage them, they tend to release all their energy at once. Which means an explosion. He hadn’t been present at DuQuesne’s defeat of Blessing of Fire, the Molothos scout ship, but he had seen the glassy crater the nuclear-level blast had left. Interstellar ships carried a great deal of energy on board.

  “Doctor Sandrisson, you were involved in the entire construction of your Holy Grail. You obviously have a good overall grasp of the systems involved in a ship, and so I will be counting on you to assess and direct repairs through the semi-automated maintenance systems. It is my guess that Doctor DuQuesne is more capable with weapons systems than you, and therefore I intend to make him our gunner, overseeing the actual firing upon our opponent.”

  Unspoken, but clear to Simon, was the fact that putting the guns in DuQuesne’s control meant that Orphan would not be the one to blame if Thilomon was accidentally destroyed during combat. And I can’t blame him. This is our problem, we have to work to solve it ourselves.

  “What’s the range on our weapons?”

  “Technically, we are within range of my largest missiles already,” Orphan said, “at a range now of two thousand kilometers. Thilomon has not changed course or speed, so apparently they have not yet noticed us, which is good. The energy cannon have ranges of up to a thousand kilometers for the largest, but against something like Thilomon we need to be much closer. Hypersonic cannon, about three hundred kilometers.

  “I hope to bring us to within two hundred kilometers or less before initiating hostilities, and ideal ranges would be much shorter than that.”

  “You really think you can get that close without them knowing?” Simon asked.

  “Automated visual scans are not useful, and other forms of sensing do not work well through the Arenaspace, except active radar to some extent—although even that has a fairly limited range. Zounin-Ginjou has excellent radar-absorbent properties. As there is a cloud bank only a few kilometers below us, extending a very long distance ahead, we should be able to close in on their radar signals while allowing them little chance to detect us.”

  Orphan suited actions to words, sending Zounin-Ginjou diving into a sea of blue-tinted cloud. Occasional lightning bolts made the trip somewhat more exciting than Simon would have preferred. “One of those would cut our trip rather short, I would think.”

  “Ahh, Doctor Sandrisson, it is true that I would rather avoid being struck. Still, Zounin-Ginjou is very well insulated and will tend to conduct through its outer superstructure. A la
rge enough bolt would produce . . . unfortunate consequences, but in enterprises as risky as these, I think that worry is the least of our problems.”

  Two more hours passed, and the radar pulses grew more powerful with each passing minute. Finally Orphan gestured to them.

  “It is time. I do not dare risk approaching closer. Are you both prepared?”

  Simon nodded, and realized his hands were sweating as he laid them on the controls. I am going into a battle between starships. I have . . . never actually been in a real fight before. Simulations, yes . . . but I know this is no simulation.

  His heart began to beat even faster, as Zounin-Ginjou tilted up, climbing. The deep-blue gloom lightened, thinned.

  Suddenly new signals appeared on Simon’s scanners. “Orphan! I’m seeing—”

  But Zounin-Ginjou was already emerging from the mist, into clear air, and Thilomon was turning. Turning too fast—they must have started the turn as soon as we began our run!

  “Damnation,” DuQuesne said in a calm, almost tranquil, voice. “They knew we were here all along, and they let us come . . . so we’d fall straight into their trap.”

  Emerging from the cloudbanks, Simon could see the source of the new signals: a fleet of ships, ten, fifteen, maybe more.

  “They allowed for the possibility of being followed and are prepared,” Orphan said, and a fatalistic tone was clear in his translated voice. “They are already deploying to cut us off.” He gave a shrug and bowed from his seat to them. “It would seem that you will no longer need to worry about paying my faction back, my friends.”

  CHAPTER 34

  Ariane watched in disbelief and shock as Wu Kung was catapulted into empty air and dwindled to nothing below them, and then whirled on Vantak, who looked at her with clinical disinterest.

  “You . . . you . . .” she felt red rage building, a fury she hadn’t felt since Amas-Garao had tricked her into accepting his Challenge through the Blessed. She stepped forward and the guards raised their weapons. “You murdering bastard!”