Challenges of the Deeps

by Spoor,Ryk E

  “To the proverbial ninety-seven decimals,” DuQuesne muttered. “This means something, and it’s big, sure as God made little green apples. Question is what.” He completed a walkaround of the figure, then shook his head. “Whatever, we’re not going to work it out here. We’d better head back.”

  “And quickly. The tremors continue, but I think they are diminishing.”

  They sped back down the array once more; DuQuesne thought Orphan was right, although there was one more powerful jolt that almost sent him careening into a huge, multi-tentacled octopoidal monstrosity with a single eye encircling its head. He recovered and ran on.

  Orphan reached the door and dove through, then stepped aside to let DuQuesne pass and triggered the door’s closure. “We have made it,” the tall, green and black alien said, beginning a more leisurely walk. “I hope we have not been detected.”

  DuQuesne caught his arm and pushed him forward. “Don’t relax yet. Move.”

  Orphan did not hesitate, but immediately matched DuQuesne’s urgent speed. “Might I inquire why?”

  “First, we don’t even want to be near that area when he starts checking, or he might go over the place with a fine-toothed comb; and with his powers, you can bet he’d find something if he was looking.” DuQuesne dropped off the platform; the landing was a bit of a jolt, but no biggie. Orphan, of course, had his wings to cushion the drop. “Second, if we were on a casual exploration tour, instead of trying to get to some specific goal, what would he expect us to do when the whole station started doing the shimmy?”

  “I take your meaning, yes. We would be expected to be heading back to see what was going on.”

  “Right. So let’s make good time and play our parts.”

  And when I get a minute by myself, I’ll find out what it was you really wanted to get away with.

  Chapter 31

  I do not like leaving her alone with this Vindatri. He hides his scent often, and when he doesn’t he smells sneaky, like Orphan and Naraj.

  But he knew that look from Ariane—the one that said it wasn’t a suggestion, and that she was worried for him as much as for herself, and that there was no point in arguing. Sanzo had that look too, sometimes.

  The door sealed behind him, and he leaned against the wall outside of the chamber. Maybe they will be done soon. It will be boring to stand out here on guard for hours.

  Still, he would do it if he had to. Sanzo—and Sha Wujing and Liu Yan and Cho Hakkai and even DuQuesne and K and Maria-Susanna—had often laughed at him about how he couldn’t stay still, but even they knew that wasn’t really true. If it was for honor he could stay still as the stones for an eternity if he had to, and there was no greater honor than in guarding someone like Ariane.

  If only she didn’t remind him so much of Sanzo, it would be easier.

  The doors and walls were soundproofed, but nothing was perfect, and by concentrating Wu could the faintest echoes of sound from within; the dead silence in this section of Halintratha helped. Some kind of chant in a language I can’t make out. He must really be trying to unlock the seal!

  He leaned closer to the door to see if he could make out anything more. If I can’t see this, I at least want to hear it!

  Then without even a pause he was flinging himself away, down the corridor, the supernal warrior’s instinct that was at his very heart screaming at him to get away, get away now!

  A sound of shattering crystal as though a palace of stained glass and diamonds were collapsing beneath the iron fist of a titan, followed instantaneously by roaring, howling, crackling thunder that did not dwindle into the distance but rose, and the walls, the solid walls that Wu Kung knew were harder than steel, bulged outward. The door was blasted from its frame, a seed squirting from between the fingers of a giant, and embedded itself to half its length into the wall opposite.

  “Buddha’s Balls!” he heard himself whisper. Seething, spitting energies of blue and green and violet streamed out of the doorway, hammering against the walls and spreading halfway down to where he had ended up, twenty meters down the corridor.

  But he could also hear Ariane screaming. It was a sound of both pain and ecstasy, a sound he knew from old, old adventures, the sound of a power awakened within a body that did not know how to contain it. And if you fail to contain it…

  He charged forward, teeth gritted, staff out and ready.

  The fountain of power did not slow him much, at first, but tingles of static sparked within his fur, crawled along his staff and robes; it was a wind, a rising hurricane of fire and ice and thunder and battering stardust. But he had faced the power of the Storm Dragons, and even in this world of the Arena, had survived the hellish winds of an Arena-ship flying headlong through the skies. He held the staff up before him and it helped cleave the flow, reduced the impact on the rest of him.

  The pressure increased suddenly as he passed the doorframe, and the unsteady storm of energy ripped and tore at him; but he dug in his claws and pushed his way through.

  Ariane was floating in midair, a blazing figure of almost pure light with only hints of structure, of solidity, head thrown back, hair no longer midnight blue but white and gold and violet that blended into the sheer power blasting out from her. Vindatri was behind a curved shield, half-hidden eyes visibly wide, trying to maintain his position, but sliding incrementally back against the absolute force of Ariane’s Awakening.

  “Ariane!” Wu shouted, but the word was torn from his lips and sent spinning away. She wouldn’t hear that unless I was practically shouting in her ear!

  “How are you standing?” demanded Vindatri’s voice, sounding as though he were, in fact, speaking from next to Wu Kung.

  “Does it matter, wizard? What is important is that Ariane gets control of her power before it kills her—or us, maybe! So if you can speak to me, help me speak to her!”

  He saw the veiled eyes narrow, then close. The shield flickered, a momentary disturbance that forced Vindatri back one step, two, three, but the mysterious being’s hand gestured towards Wu, and Sun Wu Kung felt a tingle across his lips. “ARIANE!” he shouted.

  The glowing, levitating figure started, and eyes of blue-white fire shimmered, shifted.

  Encouraged, he forced himself forward, step by torturous step. “Ariane, focus! The power is yours, but it is an undammed river, destroying its own banks! You must call upon your discipline, your focus, your own strength and encompass it within you!”

  For the first time, the screaming wail paused. “Wu? Wu, it …it hurts …but at the same time I don’t want it to stop, I want it to keep going…”

  “I know!” He remembered the fire of the Peaches burning him away to nothingness, and how he still could not stop himself from eating another …and another …and another …“I know, but you have to stop it. Focus on my voice, or on Vindatri, on something! Just focus!”

  Her eyes locked on his, desperate but determined, and the fire-tracery of an evanescent jawline tightened. “Wu …you’re in …danger…”

  “My job is to protect you!” he snapped. “From monsters, from traitors, from yourself if I have to!” He took another step forward, felt the pain as the power stripped fur from the hand gripping Ruyi. “If you want to protect me—and Vindatri, and maybe this whole station with Orphan and DuQuesne, too—focus! Encompass the flow, understand it, guide it, like your mind guides your arm! Have you had no masters, no teachers?”

  A hint of a smile, a painful ghost of a laugh. “Back to Astrella again …maybe I should’ve paid more attention…”

  She reached out with trembling fingers of light and shadow and spun the strange, multisection bracelet—itself a faceted ring of evaporating energy—on her wrist, repeating a habit Wu had noticed before when Ariane was nervous. But her eyes closed and the storm of power stuttered, weakened, shifted a moment.

  “She must restrain the power more! I must place a new Seal upon her, one that can help her control the power while she is taught!”

  “Then do it! Why
do you tell me?”

  “Because—difficult though this is to admit—her power remains too great. She is trying to control it now—and showing excellent signs of potential—but the focus to administer such a teaching Seal will require I all but drop my defenses entirely.”

  Wu shook his head. “I can’t tell her any more, give her any more clues. I don’t know how your power works. If this isn’t good enough…”

  A thought suddenly struck him, and he grinned. “But I have another plan!”

  He let go, allowed the still-rampaging power to push him back, but dug claws in to one side, skidding both backwards and in a curving sideways path until he neared Vindatri. “I will be your shield.”

  “What? But you—”

  “I can do it!”

  He brought up Ruyi Jingu Bang and began spinning it, forcing his strength against the cataract of power hammering against him, turning it to a disorganized, weakened spray of energy that barely brushed the alien’s shield. He heard what he suspected was a stunned curse, but a moment later detected the sounds of another ritual in that strange alien tongue.

  He had no time or focus to actually hear and remember the words, though; Ariane’s unleashed power slashed and hammered and shocked him, and his staff and body were the breakwater against the raging elemental flood, the windbreak cleaving the hurricane of force, turning the implacable stream of energy into harmless, chaotic mist, like a spinning fan before a firehose. His claws anchored him and he refused the pressure, ignored the pain as lightning and razor-wind stripped layers of fur and flayed the skin beneath.

  The voice of Vindatri began to rise and thunder on its own, echoing through and above the din of uncontrolled fury, and a glow of red and blue radiated from behind Wu. Without warning, the unending pressure ebbed, resurged, dwindled, turning into an erratic and unpredictable series of assaults and respites. Wu staggered and found himself falling. “Vindatri!”

  “No fear, Sun Wu Kung, for by the Voidbuilders themselves, she is now SEALED!”

  It was not a detonation but an implosion, an incomprehensible pressure that froze power in motion, crystallized energy, and then funneled it inward, backward, compressing the pussiance of that alien power into a single central point. With a shockwave that split the walls about them, the convergence came together at that central point—Ariane Stephanie Austin.

  Wu dragged himself back to his feet in the deafening silence, and staggered forward. “Ariane!”

  But she was already raising her head, an exhausted but triumphant grin emerging. “Calm down, Wu,” she said as he reached her and began helping her up. “I’ve got a handle on it now, I think. With Vindatri’s help, and yours.”

  “A handle? I think you are dreaming! You were still out of control! I could put a crank into a waterfall and have that much of a handle on it!”

  She laughed. “Seriously, Wu, I was starting to figure it out, Vindatri just finished closing it up.”

  “There is truth in what she says.” There was a note of unwilling surprise in Vindatri’s voice. “Near the end, some of those instabilities which unbalanced you so, Sun Wu Kung, were not due to my own work, but to that of Ariane Austin, beginning to truly grasp how to contain the power that came from within. I foresee you being a truly impressive student, Captain.”

  “Thanks,” Ariane said. For the first time she seemed to really focus on Wu. “My God, Wu, you look like crap! Did I do…”

  “Look around you, Captain,” he said.

  She followed his glance, and stared. “Oh.” Then she raised an eyebrow at Vindatri. “I did ask if you were prepared.”

  “You did, Captain. And I must confess I did not take your words seriously. A mistake that Orphan warned me about earlier. I must endeavor to remedy this failure in myself; assume that your human capabilities will be exactly as startling as implied.” A hint of a smile within the hood. “And now that you have begun to grasp the power within you, and a seal made that will permit effective instruction, I look forward to many more surprises.”

  “Wu needs some first aid, though,” she said. “He looks—”

  He shook his head, uncomfortably. “I will be fine. These are a few scrapes, some lost skin, a few burns. They are nothing. I will be fine.”

  “All right, if that’s the way you deal with it, I guess it’s your business. But for my part, I feel like someone just put me through a juicer, so I want to go somewhere and sit down and do nothing, maybe for a week.”

  Wu grinned and helped her walk. “I do not think you will get that luxury!”

  Chapter 32

  “How close do you estimate we are to the Humans’ Sphere?” Dajzail asked.

  Alztanza rocked his fighting claws. “We estimate about fifty thousand kilometers. Of course, that’s—”

  “I know.” Reckoning distance in unexplored parts of the Deeps was always difficult. Even if you knew, in theory, where your target was, without a beacon you could easily go astray. “At exploration speed in these conditions, that means we still have some small-turnings left to go.” A vessel like Claws of Vengeance could approach or even exceed the speed of sound, but in unknown regions of the Arena, with clouds and other things to conceal many dangers, it would rarely exceed a tenth of its maximum. “Is their Luminaire detectable yet?”

  “We have detected significant lightening near our course. Naturally, it could still be several other things. The question is whether we make the assumption that it is, in fact, the Luminaire, and alter our course accordingly, or continue until we can be certain.”

  Dajzail gestured and an image of the forward screen was projected in the conference room. So. The darkness of the cloud before us does diminish some, at about ten to fifteen degrees from our current course. A veteran of numerous Highspace sorties, Dajzail knew how many phenomena of the Arena could mimic or conceal the presence of a Luminaire, ranging from fortuitous arrangements of clouds that allowed far-distant light to pass more easily than that of the target Luminaire to burning spheres of gases or solids, or even deliberate simulations or decoys.

  Usually it did not matter; one could take one’s time, approach any possibilities slowly and deliberately, leave signal buoys if necessary to allow retracing of one’s steps, and so always arrive at the right destination. In this instance, though, misjudgment could be fatal; the capricious nature of Arenaspace’s weather patterns, seeing conditions, and transmission phenomena meant that if they chose wrongly, they could end up cruising right into sensing range of enemy scouts while going in the wrong direction. Moreover, the scouts would presumably be able to quickly notify their superiors and know the exact pathway back, while the Molothos would have to either follow their enemies or backtrack.

  That would eliminate the advantage of surprise, and depending on how difficult it was to redeploy and come about, reinforcements might be on their way, or the humans able to at least dispose their existing forces in a far more formidable way. True, Dajzail was certain that their victory would still be easily assured. However, the more warning the undercreatures had, the more of them could seek shelter, and the more of his people they might manage to kill. He wanted this to be, as much as possible, bloodless on his side, an absolute, crushing victory demonstrating utter superiority. Not a battle; an extermination of a tiny nest of vermin.

  No point in bringing my finest military advisors if I do not use them. “‘Tanza, what’s your gut feeling? Is that a Luminaire, or not? If it is, it must be the Human-undercreatures’, and thus our target.”

  Alztanza focused so much on the projected image that the rest of his eye visibly dimmed. Finally he rapped his fighting claws on the table, quickly. “That is a Luminaire. I will stake my career and life on it.”

  Dajzail buzzed his satisfaction. “My heart says the same, as well. Give the order.”

  The Fleet Master touched a control near his head with one manipulator. “Fathinalak?” A buzz of acknowledgement. “Good. Ship Master, divert our course by one thirty-fourth of a circle to port and one
two-hundredth of a circle to the apex; signal all other ships to match, and track the light in that direction. Alert me immediately if you, or any other Ship Master, have reason to believe that light is not a Luminaire.”

  “Acknowledged, Fleet Master.” Fathinalak said.

  Dajzail felt the faint motion as Claws of Vengeance changed course, and relaxed. That was the correct decision, I am sure. “Now, of course, comes the more difficult and dangerous task. How do we deploy for the assault?”

  “We do not want to approach closer than, oh, five thousand kilometers to their Sky Gates. While we have virtually no intelligence on their internal activities, such undercreatures are not so stupid as to fail to fortify the Sky Gates heavily. Such fortresses will not be significantly mobile, but will have the heaviest, longest-range weaponry available to their species. What little we have learned of their technology indicates they are a reasonably well-developed species with weapons of at least the same order as those of most Arena dwellers.”

  “Understood.” The last point was, unfortunately, not unexpected; technology usable in the Arena was mostly limited to devices discovered long before a species discovered the stardrive that brought them here.

  Another gesture brought up an image of a sphere with stylized mountains and seas atop it, glittering dots of Sky Gates hovering over it. “We have no idea how many Sky Gates they have, correct?”

  “No. The only persons who have actually visited their Sphere are either their own personnel, or the Survivor, as far as we can ascertain—and he we have less than no hold over.” Alztanza looked at him with head tilted.

  He gave a buzzing sigh. “Yes, ‘Tanza, I know. Not nearly as much information as we would like. Do we have anything on which to base strategy, other than the basic knowledge of Sphere and Gate?”

  “We do have estimates, based on guesses from other sources, that Orphan has gifted them with between fifteen and twenty-five warships. Possibly a smaller number of warships with other more general utility craft.”