Spheres of Influence

by Ryk E. Spoor

  Zounin-Ginjou drove straight towards the Blessed flagship, other ships’ fire rebounding harmlessly for the moment from its obdurate hull; but it was clear that Thilomon had no intention of allowing so direct a confrontation; it was retreating, and while Zounin-Ginjou was faster, DuQuesne knew they could not long ignore the other ships which were quickly moving to intercept and destroy.

  The new contacts were closing in now, from the direction of a great white cloud, and there were lots of them, so many that as they approached, the cloud began to darken.

  DuQuesne stared. “Sweet spirits of niter . . . what the . . .”

  Orphan, too, was momentarily stunned. “This . . . could make things very messy. Very messy indeed.”

  CHAPTER 36

  Ariane stared helplessly as the Blessed fleet swung with lethal precision and dove towards Zounin-Ginjou. Her hands found a railing nearby and gripped, holding her against the jolts of sharp maneuvers that, though lessened, were still felt onboard Thilomon.

  The displays split, showing feeds from different ships in the attacking force. At distances of a thousand miles or less, strong transmitters could bridge that distance, weld the nineteen vessels into a coordinated, unstoppable force. Orphan took his ship into a steep dive, initial salvoes failing to find their mark, and disappeared into the cloud from whence he’d come—but not before a blast of energy seared through the atmosphere of the Arena and shattered one of the newcomers to dust and smoke.

  Vantak buzzed something insulting, but did not move. The vessels mantained their pattern, many of the Blessed vessels following into the clouds while Thilomon and the rest remained above, in the clear, watching and waiting, poised to rain destruction upon the enemy vessel when she dared emerge from the clouds.

  Bluish mist and murkiness on the monitors, different vessels driving through the cloud in a deadly search. Suddenly a darker shadow, not where the other vessels should be, and blazing fire being exchanged. She saw faint flashes, sparks of impact from weapons hammering at the hull of Zounin-Ginjou even as the Liberated battleship tried to swing clear—and then wrenched around, coming about without warning.

  “What in the Minds is he doing?” muttered Vantak. “He’s charging into the attack—”

  The screen went blank, and Ariane gave a tense cheer. “That’s two, Vantak. Two in three minutes. That gives your whole fleet what, just about half an hour before it’s all wiped out?”

  Sethrik stood near her, wingcases tight, and she knew that despite her taunt, her hands were even tighter, white-knuckled on the rail.

  More flickers, half-seen exchanges of weapons against a phantom opponent, and another sector of screen went blank. Then Zounin-Ginjou lunged from the cloudbank, streaming mist like water, and its main batteries were traversing—

  “Full evasive turn now!” bellowed Vantak. The sudden yanking acceleration nearly knocked Ariane down. “No solo maneuvers, triples only! Battle groups, form and destroy!”

  Six groups of three began to form up, preparing to coordinate in the destruction of the last of the Liberated. The shining sculpture of Zounin-Ginjou was marred now, and even as she tried desperately to escape, more fire washed across the Liberated flagship.

  This is my fault.

  A part of her wanted to evade those words, as her friends were trying to evade the battle group, but both were doomed attempts.

  Two more ships of the Blessed erupted in blinding light and were gone, and Vantak gave an inarticulate screech of disbelief and fury. “They are but three on one ship! Why are they not dust by now?”

  She wanted to cheer, but she could see the damage, the shining armor dulled, chipped, scarred, scorched, and she knew the truth. Yes, Orphan and DuQuesne and Simon would do a lot of damage—but the constant hammering would get Zounin-Ginjou eventually, whether in the next few minutes or after they got four, five, perhaps six more enemy vessels. Even with luck, even with the skill of Marc C. DuQuesne and the power of Orphan’s finest vessel and Simon’s quick wit, they could not evade that many bent on their own destruction, not forever.

  And she couldn’t evade the truth.

  This is my fault. I didn’t really want to be Leader of the Faction of Humanity, so I didn’t lead. I didn’t accept that I had to be ready to lead, had to be ready to confront people like Naraj and Ni Deng, and keep confronting them until they accepted that I was the Leader and was going to stay the Leader until I decided otherwise. I let them run the show because, honestly, I didn’t believe I had what it takes. That no one has what it takes to do that job. Naraj read me like a book, and I think he honestly spoke his mind—most of the time. He knew I really wanted to have someone else do the work—and so he did the work, him and Ni Deng.

  And because of that, I got caught, Sethrik’s been stabbed in the back, Wu’s gone, and Simon and DuQuesne and Orphan are about to get killed.

  A missile took Zounin-Ginjou amidships. Somehow Orphan’s ship shrugged off the impact, but it seemed to be flying just a hair less smoothly, and black smoke was trailing from the wound in the vessel’s side.

  “Sethrik,” she said, “I’m sorry.”

  He glanced at her in surprise. “Sorry? What in the Minds’ Names do you have to apologize for?”

  “This is my fault, and I should never have let it happen. I promise you this much: if we somehow get through this, I won’t let it happen again.”

  “I . . . do not quite understand,” Sethrik said, head tilted, even as Vantak was shouting clear, precise orders to complete Zounin-Ginjou’s destruction, “but how do you think you could have prevented this?”

  “By doing what I should have done all along,” Ariane said, grimly certain. “By being the Leader of the Faction instead of playing at it. Dammit, I said enough times this wasn’t a simgame, but I was playing it like it was one—like I could step out whenever I got tired of the game.

  “This isn’t a game, and I screwed up big time. I didn’t step up and take the load, and I let other people think I was, or hope I was. And all while I was telling people I wouldn’t let just anyone take it, either.”

  Zounin-Ginjou swung around and up and began a charge straight after Thilomon; Vantak simply ordered a retreat and began closing the pattern in on Orphan’s vessel.

  Alarms suddenly buzzed. “Guidemaster! More contacts! Many more contacts! Closing fast!”

  Vantak stiffened, and for the first time he looked actually confused, rather than merely nettled that Zounin-Ginjou was refusing to die exactly on schedule. “Contacts? What are they? Any transponders?”

  “No transponders. Unknown profiles in the threat databases. Different profiles . . . many profiles!”

  Vantak looked at the scans, then tilted his head; his wings scissored a moment in indecision. “Shift our vector to allow more space. Second and third triads, diverge to screen.”

  As six ships spread in a defensive pattern between Thilomon and a huge white cloud about two hundred kilometers away, the cloud began to darken. Even Ariane stopped watching the duel between Zounin-Ginjou and the other Blessed ships; the whole battle, in fact, paused, as though everyone aboard all the vessels were holding their breaths.

  And the cloud suddenly exploded outward, dozens, no, hundreds of black and gray and green and blue forms shooting out, directly for the Blessed fleet. In the center, a monstrous thing, white and black and blue rippling across its surface, blending it with the background so it seemed some hideous ghost, gargantuan, with a gleam of crystal teeth the size of houses, a sharklike profile in double symmetry, unmistakably alive, unmistakably predatory, impossibly cruising directly at them.

  “Morfalzeen!” Hancray gasped, and the entire fleet shifted, even Zounin-Ginjou apparently uncertain whether to continue firing at the Blessed or at this titanic monstrosity—a hunting creature five kilometers long, Ariane realized incredulously as she saw the scale at the bottom of one display. But of course there would be such things—what else would prey on something like the vanthume?

  “That’s bad, I
take it?” she murmured to Sethrik.

  “Morfalzeen have been known to attack and destroy battleships, yes. Though they are not invincible and almost certainly die in the same attack. I am utterly at a loss, however, as to why the rest of these creatures,” he gestured at the motley assortment of Arenaspace life, ranging from tzchina to virrin and at least three or four others that she’d never seen, “are apparently with the morfalzeen.”

  The cloud bulged outward and something else came through, something that drew incoherent shouts and curses from the Blessed and even from Sethrik. It . . . looks like a Skyfall. She remembered threading that desperate needle and nearly getting killed. But it’s coming so fast, almost as though—

  A vanthume emerged, shoving the mass of stone and earth ahead of it, into the approaching mob of creatures. The aerial avalanche curled around the morfalzeen, apparently almost unfelt, and the smaller creatures ducked and dodged amid the rocks. A fast-moving contingent of zikki streaked past Thilomon, closing to less than two hundred meters before veering off.

  “What? What is this? Have the heavens gone insane?” Vantak cursed again. “Concentrate fire on the mor—”

  Alarms did not buzz, but shrieked this time, and a machine-gun rattle of impacts echoed through Thilomon; the screens showed the other vessels in even more trouble—even as the morfalzeen accelerated forward, literally shoving one Blessed warship aside like a linebacker tossing a toddler out of his way. The immense creature jerked as explosive and energy salvoes struck it, but continued forward, undeviating, undeterred.

  A missile struck and shattered directly on the main viewport in front of Ariane, and she realized it was . . . “Rock? Are those zikki throwing rocks at us?”

  “What?” Sethrik stared, hands twitching in the instinctive “no” gesture. “Impossible. Ludicrous. The zikki cannot use tools, they haven’t the intelligence to think of such a tactic, and they have no reason to even approach something of this size!”

  Now another wave of creatures wove in, ducking and weaving, evading energy weapons and futile cannon. The tzchina hurled their cargo, and more stone—and what looked like bones—rebounded from the viewport.

  But . . . are those scratches? “Sethrik—”

  “I see . . . yes, the stone of the Arena is often made of the bones and such of dead creatures . . . and such often still has ring-carbon composite within. This battering will have an effect!”

  The swarm wove through the Blessed ranks, sowing chaos. Zounin-Ginjou seemed oddly untouched, and suddenly swung about, firing on one of the nearer vessels; instantly the firefight began anew, but now a three-cornered battle, and one where one set of participants was a total mystery.

  The Brobdingnagian morfalzeen bored onward, shrugging off missiles and cannon and stabbing energy weapons. To Ariane’s simultaneous amusement and horror, it seemed to have targeted Thilomon, for as the Blessed flagship tried to dodge out of the way, the morfalzeen turned with it.

  “Reverse engines! Slow!” shouted Vantak. “Brace for impact!”

  The monstrous predator turned at the last second, but something huge and dark continued on, blotting out the sky, a gigantic stone that smashed into the bridge viewport; Thilomon staggered; and even as the darkness began to lighten, something else flickered, slammed into the viewport—

  And the viewport shattered, exploding inward, scattering dust and stone and jagged-edged pieces of transparent ring-carbon composite everywhere. Kandret gave a buzzing shriek and collapsed as one glittering shard impaled him; Hancray, next to him, was knocked from his seat and lay still, unconscious.

  Dust filled the air, blanking out sight. She squinted, trying to see through drifting grayness. There. Someone . . . a figure . . .

  The wind from outside whipped in a breath of clearer air and she gasped as she suddenly saw . . .

  . . . Robes of ruby and gold, sparkling of jade and sapphire and twilight purple; red-black hair flowing in the wind, bound by a golden circlet with a diamond sparkling like a star; and a crimson-and-gold staff gripped in a clawed hand . . .

  Head held high, green-gold eyes coldly furious, Sun Wu Kung stood before them.

  For a moment no one moved; even Vantak seemed utterly stunned, without words or understanding before the impossible.

  The Monkey King cast his gaze around at the tableau, and then without warning took three swift strides and fell to his knees in front of Ariane. “I . . . failed you,” he said, and his voice was soft and sad. “I failed you and DuQuesne. I was supposed to protect you and I did not. I was tricked, drawn away by a childish deception, and even when I realized that . . . even then, I was not good enough, not fast enough. I failed you, and I am ashamed.”

  Ariane was still staring, hardly able to grasp what she was seeing. “Wu . . . ?” she whispered.

  He looked up, and the emerald-auric eyes shimmered with tears of shame and remorse.

  She suddenly felt her heart beating, hammering from shock and excitement—and finally she smiled. “Wu . . . Wu Kung, there is nothing to forgive, you . . . you . . . impossible, chaos-sowing . . . Wu, the only thing that matters to me is that you’re alive when I thought you were dead.”

  His eyes widened and for a moment, as a slow, unbelieving smile dawned on his face, he looked both like a child whose mother had suddenly appeared to lift him up, and a man seeing a revelation. “R . . . really?”

  “Really.”

  The smile sharpened, even as she saw movement around them. “Then . . .” he stood, and whipped the staff around in a theatrical whirling motion that made everyone else leap back, “I think it’s time to play!”

  CHAPTER 37

  Wu could not keep the smile from alternating between savagery and joy. She has forgiven me! She cares!

  He had not dared to hope she would care for one who had failed so completely, and now that he knew she did . . . Nothing will stop me. Nothing.

  Wu Kung darted forward. The ones with their projectile and energy weapons first. A spinning strike with Ruyi Jingu Bang and the first dropped his weapon, staggering with a broken wrist hanging limply; the second was bringing up his gun but he was aiming at the wrong place as Wu’s leap brought him entirely above the Blessed soldier, and a single blow laid him out, even as Wu Kung’s feet scissored out and hammered two more Blessed to the deck. The fifth and last soldier froze in disbelief as Wu landed behind him—and then fell with a single strike to the back of the head.

  He turned and glared at the remainder. Sethrik . . . no, he is wearing binders too! So . . . a betrayal. He strode towards Vantak.

  Vantak dropped into guard, stinging tail raised. Wu evaluated stance, shift in movement, eyes, scent. He is much more dangerous than his guards. Ah. He was made to replace Sethrik, who was made to replace Orphan! So, he will be like Orphan!

  Which made him formidable, but . . . I’ve fought much worse.

  He leapt forward, caught the stinging tail with his hand, parried strikes with hand and foot with his one hand for several seconds (meanwhile using his own tail to down the last crewman who tried to sneak up behind him). As Vantak paused in frustrated incredulity, he punched.

  Vantak flew backwards and smashed into the wall, so hard that part of his right-hand crest shattered. “You kidnapped my friend.”

  The Blessed’s tail lashed out, a striking snake, but Wu Kung was the mongoose, and his hand the mouth, striking and leaving the serpent harmless. Wu yanked hard and pulled Vantak from the deck, spun him around, smashed down. “You betrayed your leader!” He reached down and lifted Vantak effortlessly from the deck, holding the other’s hundred-plus kilograms aloft like a rag doll. “And you threw me into space, so far I could have taken half an age to finish falling!”

  Vantak tried to struggle, but quickly realized he was simply outclassed. The battered body still managed a disdainful pose. “I betrayed nothing. I was given my orders and my position by the Minds.”

  Wu shrugged. “You pretended he was the leader, then, and betrayed him as one of your
people. I know nothing of your ‘Minds.’ But for what you tried to do to Ariane . . . I cannot forgive you.”

  “What do I care for your forgiveness?” Vantak said. “There are hundreds of Blessed on this ship—”

  Wu spun and threw Vantak, who gave a shriek of disbelieving fury as he hurtled out the hole Wu had created and was lost in the still-speeding wind. “One less now, anyway!” Wu shouted after him. “Ha! Let us see how you like it!”

  He leaned out the shattered window and gave a long, shrieking call. One of the tzchina flew up. “It’s okay, you people did your job! Tell everyone they can go and thank them, especially the Mouth of the Sky! And I’ll make sure to remember you all, don’t worry—I will pay the debt!”

  It flickered its understanding and streaked off.

  He turned around, to see Ariane staring at him incredulously. “Wu . . . you didn’t . . . did you . . . How could you possibly have done that?”

  Oops. And in front of Sethrik, too. He winced at the thought of what DuQuesne would say. But it’s a busy time, maybe I can dodge. “Later, Ariane, please! There are many others on this ship and we don’t want them shooting our friends, do we?”

  He could tell from her narrowed gaze that it was not, really, a very successful dodge at all. But she sighed, and said “No, we don’t. Can you find . . . Damn.” She looked out the broken window. “You threw Vantak out and I think he had the release for these binders.”

  “Oh, that. Hold on.” The binders were made of tough stuff, but he could nick them with his claws and that gave him a weak spot to attack and break in a couple of minutes. “Should I let him go?” he nodded at Sethrik.

  “He wasn’t involved, Wu. And if we’re going to do anything, I’ll need his help.”

  “Okay!” It only took a moment to release the Blessed Leader from his bonds. “So, I’m going to take care of the rest of them.”

  Sethrik stepped forward, pose showing his incredulity, then dropped to the floor in a full pushup-bow. “I . . . do not understand what I have just seen, Sun Wu Kung,” he said, “but I thank you for it just the same.” He rose. “Ariane Austin, I should go with him—”