by Ryk E. Spoor
“Basically we’ve got ourselves three main divisions of defense,” Tom said. “First, we’ve got the loaner fleet; three of them are stationed outside of the Straits at any given time.” Miniature ship icons blinked on as indicated. “Several are hanging up at about twenty thousand kilometers above the center of the main landmass—which is where the Outer Gateway is; that provides direct surveillance and cover for our main entry and exit point and our current Upper Sphere installations. The rest are doing patrols.” Several more ship icons appeared doing slow patrol patterns around the entire Sphere.
“You have crews on them already?”
“Hey, we’re not above cheating,” Steve said with a wink, handing the drinks out to their respective owners.
Tom took his and winked back at Steve. “How very true! Got the best volunteers I could, then took our first trained pilots—other than you—and sent them back home to have their skills recorded and encoded for general transfer. Steve remembered the notes on your challenge against Sethrik and the Blessed—that Orphan had warned us that Sethrik would have the best piloting skills…installed, so to speak, and that told me that that kind of transfer, at least, wasn’t forbidden by the Arena. So we’ve already got crews of ten on each of the ships and we’re trying to fill them out as we get more people. The ones with the largest crews do the patrols, because then they can use the smaller onboard scout boats to extend their range without undermanning the main ship.”
“Sounds like someone thought this out carefully.”
“That part of it,” Tom acknowledged, “would be the Arena Defense SFG. They’re responsible for a lot of the other work, which leads us to the second division of defense, the Gateway stations. We’ve got two SFG-designed big cargo conveyor ships—the Nodwick and the Nunzio—running now, and with that we’ve been able to manufacture some very large pieces and bring them through. Short story is that we’ve now got some pretty impressive fortresses sitting right on top of every one of the Sky Gates; anyone tries to come through we don’t like, they’re running through a kill zone that will hurt.” The display showed a large ring—a few kilometers across—encircling each Sky Gate; a closeup showed that the ring was closely linked sections which each were heavily armored and bristling with weaponry.
“Very nice,” DuQuesne said in an approving voice. “Big enough to let just about anyone come through without trouble, but mean enough to make just about anyone regret it if they didn’t ask first. You’ve fitted our ships with IFF beacons for this, then?”
“Identify Friend or Foe, yes. That lets even dumb automation give the alarm; no IFF beacon, the weapons automatically charge and track, and an alert is sent for someone to either give the fire authorization or not. We’ve set up encrypted, secured comm-buoy relays through the area so that we can send the signals and data to any of the available ships or down to the ground. Usually the nearest patrol ship would be given the alert and make the call.”
“I sure hope you have adequate safeties on that; the last thing we need is some friendly ship getting shot by accident.”
“The design of that control system was done by Carl and me,” Steve said. “And we tested it several times. No accidents. Simulations show it should be perfectly reliable, too.”
Ariane nodded. It’s still a bit scary to think that any ship coming through here which isn’t one of ours will be being tracked by that much firepower…but given our current situation, I guess it can’t really be helped. “Good job, then.”
Another light blinked on, this one in the center of the main continent of the Upper Sphere. “And finally, of course, we’ve been putting up—and are continuing to expand—defenses on the ground. We’re also starting recruiting for armed forces,” Tom said, looking pensive, “but that’s a sticky subject. The CSF doesn’t want to give up its best people in case someone pulls off a real-space attack—which is theoretically possible—and there honestly aren’t all that many people who want to leave fun and safe lives back home for a chance to get shot down by some alien invader.”
I can’t blame them, Ariane admitted privately. But someone’s going to have to, since we can’t depend on purely automated defenses. “Tom, this is…excellent. I really should have kept up on things much better—and I will, from now on—but I have to say that I don’t think I could have expected things to go any more smoothly if I had been. You’ve done everything I’d have wanted done and you never even bothered me about it. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Tom said, looking just a little embarrassed. “Honestly, though, it all just sort of…happened. Watching how systems interact, getting them to work together…it’s just what I do, if you see what I mean.”
“I most certainly do see. But as this place gets bigger, and the different rules of the Arena versus back home start to penetrate, it’s going to start to get harder to run—lots harder, especially if any of our immigrants start thinking like our friends Oscar and Michelle.”
Tom Cussler nodded slowly, a frown growing. “Wish I could say you’re wrong, but I’m sure you’re right. Not sure I can think of a solution, though.”
“I can,” she said. “The problem is that back home people almost don’t have to depend on everyone else, at least for survival. We can be, and in some ways, we are little self-involved islands. But here we can’t be that; we can’t get AIWishes to give us everything we want all by ourselves. So there really does have to be a hierarchy, someone who’s in charge.”
Tom’s eyes suddenly narrowed in consternation. “Oh, no—”
“Oh, yes. Thomas Cussler, you are the perfect choice. Heck, you’ve already taken the position. I just have to give it a name and make it official. Then you’ll have the authority you’ll need to make the decisions stick when people start thinking they can just go off and do things their own way.”
Tom rolled his eyes, but then nodded. “Yes, I guess I can’t argue with the idea…and truth be told, I really wouldn’t feel comfortable turning over control of this little community to anyone else—at least anyone outside of our little group.” He looked pointedly down the dark side corridor. “But—just to be completely frank—are you going to have the authority to make that stick? Because I think there’s a lot of people who are going to want to fight you on that kind of decision.”
“That’s what I’m coming back to make sure of, Tom,” Ariane answered, and she was gratified to see that he smiled at the words. “With what’s happened in the Arena, and now—we find out from DuQuesne and Oasis—back home, we can’t afford any more screwups.
“They didn’t take me seriously. I didn’t take me seriously, and while we came out of it well, hundreds…no, thousands of other people died because of that failure on our part; the fact that those other people were at the time my enemies doesn’t matter nearly as much as the fact that if I had kept my eye on things, they wouldn’t have been my enemies and we wouldn’t have had to kill them. That kind of fumbling around stops now.”
Tom nodded. “Glad to hear it. If you have a way of pulling that off, that is.”
DuQuesne chuckled darkly. “Oh, I think we do.”
Chapter 51.
“And what, exactly, do I get from this if I cooperate?”
Oscar Naraj’s voice wasn’t truculent or hostile; as DuQuesne had rather expected, it was completely controlled, a man asking a simple question. Oscar’s glance was focused mostly on Ariane, but did take in DuQuesne, Oasis, Wu Kung, Simon, and Gabrielle, who were the others on board “Arena Transfer Shuttle #3.” The others were staying this time; Laila had looked slightly wistful at the thought of returning, but had chosen to stay rather than discover what might happen to her when she returned and three AISages woke up in a mind that might be far too different from the one they had known.
Ariane smiled very coldly at Oscar. “Not a pardon and not off the hook, if that’s what you’re hoping.” The smile warmed—just enough to take it from absolute zero to dry ice, but hey, that’s a couple hundred degrees. “You claim you did not
direct what happened to me, and did not want such tactics. You’ve been acting like you think you may have screwed up. If you cooperate—exactly—I might start to believe you’re more valuable as an asset than as an example. That is what you might—and let me stress that word, might—be able to get out of this.”
Naraj studied her wordlessly for several minutes. DuQuesne could see conflicting tensions in his muscles. But it’s his decision to make alone. Ni Deng was locked up in her own separate cell on the shuttle ship; this was Oscar Naraj’s play.
“Very well,” Oscar said after another moment. “I will send the message as you direct, complete with my own key codes and verifications. I am not quite sure what you expect this to accomplish.”
“You’ll also send the appropriate signals to any allies who aren’t in the SSC, CSF, or their Arena Research Division—exactly the signals you’d send if you were returning after completely successful negotiations according to your standards,” Ariane said. “And if you’ve come to respect us as you claim, I hope you understand that if you do try to slip something by, there’s a good chance we’ll catch you right there, and a certainty we’ll catch you out sooner or later—with ‘sooner’ being the way to bet.”
Somewhat to DuQuesne’s surprise, Oscar gave a genuine smile. “Captain Austin, I most certainly recognize that. I understand your hostility—and it is deserved—but I hope you realize that I am not an utter fool. I see that your general plan is complete surprise, and to this end I will indeed cooperate fully.”
Ariane looked at him, then the others. “What do you all think?”
Wu Kung nodded. “He wasn’t actually smelling very twisty at all there.”
Oscar failed to suppress a start.
“Yeah, Wu is something of a lie detector. Since you’re always planning something he was never sure which way you were jumping, but he was always suspicious of you and Ni Deng, even when the rest of us were starting to relax,” DuQuesne said, grinning. “I’d say go, Ariane.”
The others agreed as well. Ariane nodded. “All right, then everything’s set. DuQuesne?”
“Console’s unlocked. Send away, Mr. Ambassador.”
Naraj concentrated; DuQuesne observed the heavily encrypted traffic streaming to the recording system of the message torpedo. Wu Kung was close by, and DuQuesne could just make out his breathing—heavier, as he carefully scented Naraj for any sign of duplicity in this operation.
“Done,” Naraj announced after a moment. “If you send that torpedo through, it will transmit the appropriate messages. They will then be expecting me at the monthly meeting, and my other allies will not be prepared for you to crash the party, so to speak.” He looked at her curiously. “I admit to not knowing exactly what you plan to do. I can see you making a fairly forceful showing, but if I understand what you need to achieve correctly, you will need some sort of additional leverage beyond that which I am aware of.”
“Yes. I will.” She turned to Oasis. “Put the ambassador in his room and lock it.”
Once he was gone, Ariane sighed and sank into one of the shuttle’s chairs. “How sure are we about what he just did? Could you read what he sent?”
DuQuesne shook his head. “Wouldn’t do us any good even if I could. There’s no way to tell if he had personally agreed-upon codes that would allow him to send innocuous-sounding messages to people that actually tipped them off to something being hinky. But I’m going with Wu’s instincts and his sense of smell. Naraj’s a cool customer, a Big Time Operator if there ever was one, but I don’t believe he could’ve stayed completely calm while trying to slip one by both me and Wu, with both of us practically standing right over him. He’d have gotten nervous. Real nervous.”
“All right, then. Send it, Simon.”
At Dr. Sandrisson’s direction, the message torpedo dropped away from the docked Arena shuttle and flew off to the safe minimum distance before winking out of existence in a quick double-ended flare of light.
“So,” Oasis said, returning from her mission, “how long before we go?”
“If our timing information is correct, the meeting should be gathering now. I’m going to pilot us over to the corresponding location. Simon, have you determined the best accuracy I can expect with the Sandrisson Conversion?”
“I have. Theoretical minimum accuracy—assuming ideal cases—is roughly three kilometers in normal space. If you were to transition out and back immediately, in other words, you could end up anywhere within a three-kilometer radius volume of where you started. Practically speaking, given your piloting skill, the coil designs, and such, I would not expect better than a three hundred kilometer accuracy. For this purpose, you need to consider this point,” he marked a specific location slightly behind the central point inside the Shuttle’s main body, “as the center of the craft and the point from which you will judge the transition location.”
“So that’s about…one meter distance in terms of the Orrery?”
“Correct.”
Ariane grinned. “Now this will be fun. Everyone strapped in?”
Oasis sat down and locked herself into a seat. “Now we are!”
DuQuesne watched as Ariane took the shuttle out smoothly, heading towards the near-center of the Harbor. Piloting is her real element, even if she’s now found her real calling, so to speak.
Watching her helped deal with the loss and strain of the past few days. It didn’t erase DuQuesne’s pain—nothing but time would reduce that burning guilt and anger—but seeing that they were doing something certainly aided him in pushing the problem to the back of his mind for a while.
“Mind if I ask something, Ariane?” Oasis’ voice was hesitant.
“Oasis, I’m never going to mind if you ask. I may or may not answer.”
“Right.” The redhead smiled brightly. “Well, it’s what Naraj said. What’s the plan? Those guys on the SSC and CSF, except for Saul and his group—they’re going to be kinda hard to push around, and what you need to get out of them…whew!” She made a gesture of wiping sweat off her brow. “That’s gonna be one heck of a trick, you know? So…what have you got up your sleeve?”
Ariane smiled, the expression visible from the side and audible in her voice. “Well, remember, Oscar knows we survived that betrayal. He hasn’t got a clue as to what we got out of it.”
“Oh, duh. You’ll be able to point out we’ve got three Spheres now.”
“That’s one biggie, yes. And if I get the timing on the messages right, they also won’t have a good grasp of just how strong our defenses are now. Thanks to Tom, they won’t be able to make a good case that I’ve messed that up. And…” she trailed off.
“And…?”
The grin became the savage, killer-instinct smile whose razor-edged danger DuQuesne found irresistably attractive. “And I have a trump card that I just figured out how to play last night.”
She didn’t say any more, and it was obvious that she wasn’t discussing this part of her strategy. Okay. She’s trying to prove she can do this on her own, and I’ve got to let her do it. And my gut says she can.
But I’ll be ready to back her up just in case, anyway.
As they approached the target area, Simon projected the location of Kanzaki-Three into everyone’s perceptions, but especially to Ariane. “There is the location. You must center on it very carefully, or else—”
“—or else we may materialize somewhere we don’t want to,” she said with a sharp grin, “like maybe inside Kanzaki-Three?”
Simon looked at her with an expression of puzzled exasperation. “I don’t believe that it will allow you to materialize inside another physical object—the spacetime exclusion principle tends to forbid it—but I would not care to test that belief with my life.”
Ariane slowed the shuttle to a crawl, jockying it around with delicate adjustments of the attitude jets. After a few moments, DuQuesne could see displayed before him the ghostly shape of the shuttle with the brilliant green dot of Simon’s derived “transition cen
tral point” slowly approaching a red dot—the point nominally one meter to the zenith of the location of Kanzaki-Three.
“Don’t you want to give us a little margin, Ariane?” Simon said tensely. “After all, if I’m a bit off—”
“Oh, live a little, Simon!” she said, as the red dot touched the green. “After all—”
Blazing rainbow light flared around them.
“—what could go—well, look at that!”
Kanzaki-Three loomed immense in the forward viewport, scarcely ten kilometers distant.
“Perfect piloting, Ariane,” DuQuesne said. And lucky. Funny, that. “Even if you were a bit cavalier about the approach.”
“Great Kami, Ariane, you cut that…too fine!” Simon murmured, staring.
DuQuesne grinned at Simon’s momentary discomfiture. His headware sensed Ariane turn control over to the slightly-peeved Kanzaki-Three local control for landing. “But it got us in very close; short enough that I’m now sure we can keep the lid on until we actually enter.”
“Any changes in the basic plan?” Gabrielle asked.
“No, not as long as you can establish communications with—”
“I’ve already got Vincent on my comm. Simon?”
“Mio has responded and understands the situation. Mentor is standing by. Entrance will be clear. As far as anyone can tell, this is a fairly routine meeting with the additional importance that the ambassador has returned and will be addressing the Council and the Arena Research Division directly. No sign that there is any other untoward activity.”
Ariane nodded. “All right, then.
“Here we go.”
Chapter 52.
Ariane stopped, only one door away from the Council Room. The others looked at her; she tried to look unconcerned, but inside, she realized she was terrified.
No, not now! I can’t afford this! Dammit!
But it was there, at this eleventh-hour moment; fear that she was making a terrible, terrible mistake, that she couldn’t pull this off even if it wasn’t a mistake, that—despite the treacherous way she’d done it—Michelle had been right to try to get her out of the way.