Challenges of the Deeps

by Spoor,Ryk E

  Ariane, having realized much of this was her fault for not really grasping the reins of Leadership, prepares to go to the System to confront the political issues head-on, waiting for the response by the Minds (as that will have a significant effect on her plans) and on the determination of whether Shadeweaver/Faith powers work in normal space (because that would have vast implications for what the Blessed’s Minds tried to do). In the interim, DuQuesne gets a message that someone hostile appears to be after the remaining Hyperions he was trying to protect back home. It is decided that Marc and Oasis will go back and try to find out what’s happening there—and to contact Mentor, if they can, to see if he has information.

  Simon, with the help of Dr. Relgof, is able to uncover evidence that the powers of Shadeweaver and Faith do work even in normal space, meaning that the Minds’ plans were all too feasible.

  DuQuesne and Oasis make contact with Mentor as they approach Counter-Earth Station 3, where the dreaming Hyperions have been moved. The station shuts down as they approach, and despite a desperate emergency docking and headlong rush through the Station, arrive too late; Dr. Davison, who was caretaking for DuQuesne, is nearly dead, and the room with the Hyperions is a wreck, with a pile of charred corpses in the center. Mentor barely warns DuQuesne in time to avoid a high-voltage electrical trap.

  In the Arena, while in a discussion about Arena biology with Laila, Ariane is alerted to a visitor’s presence. Selpa, Leader of the Vengeance, arrives and announces that they have accepted Maria-Susanna as a member; she is with him, and Ariane gets a first look at the deceptively harmless former Hyperion. No sooner have they left than Tanglil of the Blessed arrives and delivers a message from the Minds themselves:

  The Minds accept Ariane’s price for their attempted kidnapping, and give three Spheres to Humanity in recompense. Ariane immediately and unexpectedly gives one to the Liberated for Orphan’s assistance.

  Ariane returns to their Sphere for the first time in months, to discover just how much chaos has ensued, with over a thousand new people now living, working, and researching in the Inner Sphere and Upper Sphere. But there is some order, being enforced by Thomas Cussler, who has taken up the position of directing activities in the Sphere. Thomas gives them a rundown of conditions in the Sphere, and the defensive preparations that have been and are continuing to be made to protect Humanity’s home Sphere.

  The group arrives in time to enter a complete session of the SSC, with most CSF representatives present as well, and Ariane addresses them with a summary of what has happened—and why much of it was the fault of politicial maneuvering that assumed from the first that she was the wrong choice for the job. She presents proof of the Arena’s power and influence even in their own world and the need to have an actual, effective Leader of the Faction of Humanity.

  General Jill Esterhauer, a long-term member of both organizations, is the center of resistance to this idea, and it becomes clear that this is based both on rational principles—a well-founded fear of any single individual holding such power—and on an apparent pattern of Hyperion connections she has noted, making the General wonder if there is more to these events than is being discussed.

  Esterhauer’s forces are prepared to force the issue, but Ariane keeps her talking as DuQuesne and his allies—including Mentor—come to realize with Simon’s help that there is another element at work; the General has been subtly suborned. When the General begins to consider some of the points Ariane begins to make, a hidden connection comes to life and a brief cyber-battle erupts. This is concluded quickly—almost invisibly to most of those present—and the discussion continues.

  Dr. Robert Fenelon of the SSC makes a compromise suggestion, derived partly from ancient Roman political structures, that seems reasonable enough. Before the negotiations can complete, however, General Esterhauer collapses, a delayed effect of the hostile force that had been attempting to manipulate her.

  Fortunately, the General is not damaged beyond recovery, and ultimately Dr. Fenelon’s plan is accepted by her and by the combined SSC and CSF. With her position acknowledged, Ariane lays out a number of broad directives, plans for the future, including the need to create a set of laws governing activities in the Arena …and the need, in view of what has happened with the Blessed, to solve the issue of AI rights; Mentor himself offers an impassioned speech as to why it is time for humanity and their artificial children to work as full equals. The speech includes the revelation that the enemy that nearly destroyed Esterhauer was itself a renegade AI—only stopped by other AIs and a Hyperion working in concert. In short, an escaped Hyperion adversary.

  With questions of leadership and succession addressed, Ariane and crew can finally turn to the question of what to do next …and Ariane already has that planned out: fulfill the promise she made to Orphan…

  Chapter 1

  Ariane Austin felt the peculiar jolt that the Sandrisson jump always gave her, and found a smile on her face. “We’re back,” she said.

  “Out of the political frying pan and into the Arena’s fire,” DuQuesne said, chuckling. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

  “Not something I would have expected, if you’d asked me before all this started,” Ariane said. “But I have to admit that Arena politics are more exciting.”

  “Fates preserve us from exciting politics like that last adventure,” Simon Sandrisson said.

  Ariane looked back at Simon, who was sitting in one of the passenger seats of the shuttle Century Eagle, adjusting his hair clip to catch a stray lock of his pure-white hair. “Why, Simon, are you saying you don’t want to rescue me again?”

  There was general laughter from everyone present—DuQuesne, Wu, Gabrielle, Oasis Abrams, and Simon himself. “I would say rather that I would prefer you never be in a position to require rescue,” Simon replied, his smile and wink charming as ever. “Although you and Sethrik did well enough for yourselves at the end.”

  “With the Monkey King’s help, yes,” she said, nodding at Wu with a smile. “But yes, I agree. Still …we’re about to go out and get ourselves in danger again, aren’t we?”

  DuQuesne looked momentarily grim. “And I really wish I could find a decent argument to keep you out of it, but I can’t.”

  “No, you can’t, Marc. I could keep you out of it with more justification. The only argument that even has relevance is that the Leader of the Faction should stay home where it’s safe.”

  They all knew that wouldn’t wash with her, and wouldn’t for the other Faction leaders. Orphan, leader and—until recently—sole member of the Faction of the Liberated, often risked his life in questionable ventures, such as the one they would be accompanying him on.

  His unique position excused his risk-taking, but the fact was that—despite the Arena residents’ overall greater aversion to high risk—Faction Leaders and equivalents seemed quite willing, and capable, of facing dangerous situations personally. Sethrik and his Mind-groomed traitorous successor Vantak had shown that clearly, engaging adversaries directly and without any reluctance in deciding the fate of worlds with guns, swords, or bare chitinous hands. Her impression was that Selpa’A’At of the Vengeance, Dajzail of the Molothos, and even wise, considered Nyanthus of the Faith would all be willing to take on threats to their Factions personally, if need be.

  And that’s the kind of company I have to run in. Me. Ariane Austin …Leader of the Faction of Humanity.

  The thought was still ridiculous, even though she’d lived with that title for well over a year now. The idea that she—formerly just a high-ranking racing pilot—had ended up as the literal leader of the entire human race was inescapably ridiculous, yet also as inescapably true. She’d nearly lost her life—and cost humanity a great deal more—before she’d not only grasped, but accepted, that burden that the nigh-omnipotent Arena had laid upon her.

  Now she was going back once more …and she already had a challenge ahead of her.

  The rest of the trip to the great docking facility within their S
phere’s “Harbor” was uneventful, not that she expected anything to happen. Of all the places in the Universe, being inside one’s own Sphere was probably one of the safest, at least in terms of threats from outside your own faction.

  Unlike earlier voyages, there was traffic at the Dock. Multiple ships were coupled to the airlocks along the kilometers-long, eerily skeletal structure. “Approaching saturation,” Simon observed. “Are we regulating transitions carefully?”

  “Yeah,” DuQuesne answered. “Checked with Saul on that and a few other things. They’ve done a few experiments and verified your theoretical limits—minor tweaks that might change the model slightly but nothing major—and there’s now a lot of oversight on transitions on both sides.”

  “So how many vessels can we get in the harbor before we get stuck?” Ariane asked as their seats unlocked and restraints retracted.

  “For vessels of reasonable size, the limit’s twenty,” said DuQuesne. “Doesn’t seem to matter whether they’re in groups or all spread out, either, which doesn’t make much sense to me.”

  They all oriented themselves before entering the airlock; among the other impossible things the Arena did casually was to provide science-fiction-standard artificial gravity within the Spheres and most other living areas. Not orienting yourself before you stepped out was a good way to fall on your head.

  “Why’s that?” Gabrielle asked. “Seems to me that if you spread ’em all out, they wouldn’t interfere with each other so much. Or maybe if you crowded ’em all together the interference wouldn’t reach far out.”

  Simon’s head came up with a sharpness that showed an insight. “Ah, of course. The problem, Gabrielle, is that when the ships are close together, the interference resonance is magnified by the multiple coils, so that it in effect ‘balloons out,’ vastly larger than the individual drive fields would be alone. At the same time, if you distributed the ships widely, each one has a very large interference radius. I suppose you could get more in, if you distributed all of your ships exactly right, but it would be a difficult process and would involve sending your transitioning ships billions of miles out—in all directions. And, of course, if any of those ships started to move, all bets would be off.”

  Wu Kung left first, as usual; he would not allow Ariane to enter any location without scouting it himself. The others followed once he waved; exiting, Ariane saw how Wu was studying the bustling groups of workers. “All clear, Wu?” she asked.

  “Come on, Captain,” he said. “They’re just working.” The deceptively diminutive Hyperion trotted ahead of her, brown-furred tail waving a counterpoint to his footsteps, gold-tipped staff slung over his back. Wu’s gaze flicked back and forth, shown by the slight movement of his head, but despite his alertness he was also moving with the relaxed bounce she knew signaled that everything really was all right.

  She noticed a pensive expression on DuQuesne’s face as they continued, and a similar shadow pass over Oasis’ as well. She let the others go on past and joined them; Wu glanced at her but then looked away, clearly aware of what she was doing. “Are you both okay?”

  The immense black-haired engineer looked down at her, started to answer, then stopped himself; the red-haired former CSF officer seemed also at something of a loss for words. Finally DuQuesne sighed. “For what we have to do now, yeah, I’m okay. But losing those four…”

  “…losing any of them was bad,” Oasis said bluntly. “But four? And not by accident, not even by Maria-Susanna? She was bad enough, but we…”

  “You knew her,” Ariane finished. “She was …a known quantity, no matter how terribly she was broken. This came out of the blue. You don’t know what happened?”

  “What happened, that was fairly easy,” DuQuesne said, looking up reflexively as they passed through the immense door that led to the Inner Sphere. “The question wasn’t what but who and why. Whoever did this wanted to make sure there wasn’t a chance of reconstructing anything, biological or electronic. They were in the process of wrecking Wu’s when we arrived, that’s why it wasn’t completely totaled.” He looked surreptitiously at the Hyperion Monkey King, but Wu appeared to be busily leading the way and watching.

  “And …? ”

  He shook his head. “Still not much. Saul’s got his best people working on it, but he’s …well, not hopeful. There’s a possibility there’s some left in the deep backup data archives—those are hidden inside extra hardware layers embedded in the internal shell supports—but I’m not optimistic.”

  Ariane tried to keep her expression neutral, but inside she felt the sting of sympathetic loss. Poor Wu! That would be his whole world they just destroyed—his friends, his enemies, his family and everything he was raised with. Simulated or not, they were real AIs, which means they were as much people as we are. And that would be true of the other Hyperions who died. Whoever did this murdered a lot more than four people.

  “It has to be someone associated with Hyperion,” Oasis said. “They knew exactly what they were doing and how to do it, and that trap they set for Marc …they knew him.”

  “That ought to narrow it way down.”

  “Problem is,” DuQuesne said, “none of the known Hyperion survivors fit this pattern. The only good candidate—at least for planning this—would be one of the old Hyperion AI adversaries.”

  She felt a chill, as if a procession of ants dipped in liquid nitrogen had run down her spine. “And according to Mentor, at least one of them has escaped.”

  “Right. But that puts us back to square one, in a way, because even Mentor couldn’t tell us which of the villain AIs it might be, and there are a lot of candidates. There were slightly more than a thousand Hyperions, and while a few of them didn’t have, well, epic-scale adversaries, most of them did, and some—especially those from long-running fictional universes—had many.” He looked to Oasis.

  “Don’t worry, Marc,” she said, and put a hand on his arm. Ariane saw, in her gaze and posture, the duality that lived inside that single body—a nearly-merged combination of the original Oasis Abrams, and the Hyperion that was usually just called “K.” “You’ve got your own mission. Leave this one to me.”

  Ariane didn’t hear the rest of the conversation, because Tom Cussler was waving at her from next to Wu Kung. “Hello, Tom,” she said, returning his bear-hug and hearing him grunt a bit at the reminder she was probably stronger than him. “Or I should say, Governor Cussler.”

  He grinned, and Steve Franceschetti, standing next to him, gave him a congratulatory punch in the arm. “Way to go, Tom!”

  “So that’s the title, is it? Confirmed by the SSC?”

  “Confirmed and a lot of other things, too.” She handed them each a datachip. “Go over that tonight in detail. You’ll have a lot to absorb. Short version, I’m still Leader of the Faction, but there’s a mechanism to yank me that I think we can live with. And I’m not going to be around long; got a promise to fulfill for Orphan.”

  “I hope the details on that are here too,” Tom said, falling in next to them as they continued onward.

  “They are. As much as I know, anyway. Not to be spread around outside of our inner circle, though. You people need to know, but most others don’t.”

  “Are you staying?” Steve asked. “I could get things set up for—”

  “Sorry, Steve,” she said. “Next time, I hope. But I want to get back to Nexus Arena right away and make clear that things have been settled at home. The Leader of the Faction really can’t be absent long.”

  “Right. Of course.” Steve’s sharp face, topped by curly brown hair, showed his disappointment, but there was understanding there too; he knew exactly how important it was for the Faction Leader to be present and active in the Arena.

  The group continued through Gateway Colony, as it was now being called, making their way through the canyon-like roadways to the hexagon-paved center of the colony, then through the next doorway and through a series of corridors to the Inner Gateway, that huge swirling circle of
iridescent-sparked ebony that led to Nexus Arena.

  The familiar whirling tingle and indescribable, spinning, hurtling sensation seized her as she stepped through that portal and emerged into the kilometers-wide room filled with Gateways that was called Transition, the entryway to Nexus Arena itself.

  In all directions were almost uncountable alien figures—bipedal, amorphous, multilegged, tentacular, floating—moving into or out of the Gateways, meeting with each other, avoiding others, and passing eventually out of Transition through a great archway into Nexus Arena proper. A Milluk—the same species as Vengeance Leader Selpa’A’At—was walking with spidery elegance alongside a sluglike Shiquan; a massive Daelmokhan’s semi-saurian body maintained a slow, dignified pace in order to continue a discussion with one of the Blessed To Serve. A dozen dozen other species, all intermingling, talking, gesturing, moving in a dazzling and, Ariane admitted to herself, somewhat intimidating array of diversity and mystery.

  But the very sight sent a thrill through her soul, and she knew she was home. She felt the grin spreading across her face as she stepped forward and headed down the ramp. “We’re back, Arena,” she said.

  Welcome back, Captain Ariane Austin, said a quiet, yet somehow profoundly powerful, Voice in her head, a Voice she had heard a few times before: the Voice of the Arena itself, or whatever intelligence hid behind and within the nigh-omnipotent Arena.

  She stumbled with the shock. “I didn’t expect an answer.”

  This time there was no additional remark forthcoming, but the simple fact there had been one at all filled her with a vague foreboding. The Arena generally didn’t speak unless it had a very, very good reason to do so, and from what she’d heard from other inhabitants of the Arena, she’d already had it speak to her, or in her presence, more times than most people ever would, even full-time residents of the Arena. So why did it speak now? Just to greet me?