Challenges of the Deeps

by Spoor,Ryk E

  And those chains—chains forged of the elemental essence of matter, beyond even the strength of legend—shattered with a detonation like the essence of triumph.

  Chapter 45

  Where …am I?

  It’s okay, Ariane. It’s time you woke up. The voice was DuQuesne’s, in her mind, the strong, deep voice that spoke without sound. Vindatri was playing us like we figured, and locked you and Orphan down. And now…

  Ariane’s vision and mind suddenly cleared, and she found herself thinking like herself—really, truly like herself—for the first time in weeks. He did! That son of a—

  Wu Kung’s chi detonated in white-gold flame around him, and Ariane felt Halintratha itself rock beneath that manifestation of sheer power. Vindatri had staggered back, thrown up his arm, as Wu ground out, “I …will never …be chained …AGAIN!”

  The chains—glittering with the sheen of CQC, chains whose strength made the ring-carbon Ariane knew so well seem less than cobwebs—parted before the absolute, unstoppable strength of the Monkey King. But she didn’t allow herself to contemplate the incredible. “Take this, Vindatri—vanens!”

  Fire.

  A mote of pure incandescence streaked from her pointed finger towards the cloaked figure, who whirled and gestured barely in time; flame erupted across a hemisphere of shield, even as DuQuesne straightened to his full two-meter height and grinned savagely. “You wanted our secrets, you triply-unprintable bastard? Here, have a sample!”

  She thought she saw a polychromatic sparkle emanating from DuQuesne’s wrist, the ghost of a concept that was, here, as real as herself. Vindatri staggered as though struck, but seemed to recover—

  As Sun Wu Kung tore through his shield as though it wasn’t even there and kicked Vindatri so hard the enigmatic being was flung arrow-straight across the hundred-meter width of the room, to impact with groundshaking force against the wall, leaving an imprint of his body in the polished metal. “Ha! We have many samples for you! This is an all-you-can-eat buffet of samples! Get up, Vindatri!” He advanced, twirling his staff as though it were a weightless baton. “This would be boring if you’re down already from a little hit like that!”

  The crumpled figure stirred, and then a sound emanated from the cowl that sent creeping chills skittering down Ariane’s spine.

  Vindatri was laughing.

  “Oh, Sun Wu Kung,” he said, rising with careful deliberation, “I would certainly never wish to bore my guests!”

  Crap. She had really believed that that impact had killed Vindatri, or at least knocked him out. But from his voice, he was barely stung. Wu called it a tap, anyway. That means Wu wasn’t really serious yet, but—

  Even as Wu Kung started forward, Vindatri cast both arms outward and shouted an invocation she could only partially understand. But even the beginning was enough to get her to shout out “Sonderan!”

  Only a bare fraction of a second saved her, for the instant her shield materialized, the room became a sea of seething, crackling lightning. Wu Kung was driven back and she was afraid to see what it did to DuQuesne, and then she heard a buzzing scream behind her.

  Orphan! My God, he’s going to get killed!

  The lightning field subsided, leaving Vindatri standing, tall and forbidding, on a clean and polished spot in the center of blackened chaos. Wu was rising slowly to his feet, and—to her astonishment—DuQuesne looked relatively unharmed. She risked a glance behind her.

  Orphan, too, was rising, but with the sluggish motion of one barely a step ahead of unconsciousness. “Orphan!” she shouted, and saw the eyes blink, focus after a moment on her. “Orphan, run! You’ll die!”

  “He will not be alone, Captain Ariane Austin,” Vindatri’s voice said, echoing throughout Halintratha and shaking the deck beneath her feet. “I will discover your secrets better when you all lie dead or dying at my feet!”

  Wu Kung gave a grinning snarl and leveled a tremendous blow at Vindatri—only to start in surprise as his staff rebounded from empty air. DuQuesne, too, blinked in wary surprise. “What the …that’s a mind-screen. Top-drawer, too. How the hell—”

  “Do you children believe that you have power?” Vindatri said contemptuously, and though he seemed to be almost whispering, Ariane’s very bones vibrated with every word, even through her shield. “You know so little, you have seen scarcely the interval of a illita’s wingbeat in all your lives together, and because you have a surprise or two you believe that makes you the equal of one who has seen civilizations …seen species rise and fall? I am Vindatri, and those who know that name speak it in fear, or revere it as the name of a god!”

  “Big talk,” DuQuesne said. “Oh, you’re a Big-Time Operator, I’ll give you that, but all the power you have comes from the Arena, and so do all our little ‘surprises.’”

  “I have heard that talk a time or two myself!” Wu Kung was grinning broadly, showing his fangs with cheerful savagery. “Demons and gods, dragons and sorcerers, they all say the same things—and I have beaten them all!”

  “You’re nothing but a renegade Shadeweaver,” Ariane said, straightening and stepping to the side, to make sure Orphan had cover behind her. “Older than they let their brethren get, maybe older than we can imagine. But you’re still doing the same thing I am …and you’ve been surprised by me a lot of times.” She raised her hand and let a glow gather around it, as her clothes transformed to the strange uniform she had worn after her Awakening. “I am the Leader of the Faction of Humanity, and you are about to learn the same lesson Amas-Garao learned—and by God, it’s going to cost you!”

  She braced one hand with the other. Time to see if luck’s still with us. “THIS is for screwing around with my mind, you son of a bitch!” Focusing all her will on envisioning the result she wanted, she combined wirthshem and geunate. “THUNDERQUAKE!”

  The floor heaved upward, shattering and splitting like the ground in a quake, and as it did so a concentrated mass of lightning played around and through the rising blocks—rising around Vindatri, and his insubstantial shield quivered under the assault.

  Behind her, she heard hesitant footsteps, staggering, then regaining strength. Orphan’s running. She was relieved, and couldn’t blame him; a part of her thought running sounded like a real good idea against this being, and Orphan …for all his cleverness and secrets and age, he wasn’t anything like ready to play in this league.

  And as Vindatri’s shield surged outward, blasting the shards of floor to dust, she wondered if she was really ready.

  He’s got a lot on the ball, this guy, came DuQuesne’s mental voice. I’m hitting him hard and his mindshield’s still holding. Ariane, you and Wu have to keep him distracted for at least a few seconds, give me a little time to work in. She could sense a similar message being sent to Wu Kung.

  I’ll do what I can, Marc …but I don’t know how long that will be. That chill down her spine was stronger.

  Vindatri towered up before them, now surrounded by a sphere of flame and electricity that made his form waver threateningly behind the veil of power. “Surprises, yes, you have shown me many; combining two powers so swiftly, so instinctively, this is yet another. And mysteries, as to why the Arena permits you such powers when I have never seen such before, not in all my ages of watching and learning.

  A gesture fast as a blink, and brilliant green energy parried another blow of Sun Wu Kung, with a concussion that pushed Ariane back and drove DuQuesne to one knee. “But a mere renegade Shadeweaver? You think far, far too small, too petty, to grasp the truth. I am the First, Captain Austin. I am the reason the Blood of the Skies fear to let any of their people continue down the path beyond a single lifetime, and I am the nightmare the Faith have in their darkest dreams.”

  Vindatri’s hooded gaze swept the three of them, Wu Kung gathering his own golden power inward, DuQuesne bracing himself with his right arm raised across his chest and a multicolored glow beginning to shine, and Ariane, preparing another strike, wondering how she could draw on the pow
er that she’d felt on her Awakening and release, and behind Vindatri she saw a streaming of ebony and smoke, heard the building howl of a wind from beyond any sky. “But you wish to try these powers against me? Come, then—if you are prepared for what awaits!”

  “HA! Are you prepared?” Wu Kung streaked forward, and his strike could have leveled a skyscraper; instead, it touched nothing, for Vindatri was gone. Instantly, Wu disappeared, reappearing behind the rematerialized alien, who disappeared again in turn. Ariane found herself staring open-mouthed as the two figures blinked in and out of existence, flickering around the room and exchanging blows that shook Halintratha like a shanty near a battlefield. Dammit! I can’t get a bead on—

  Let me help you on that, DuQuesne thought. He can move all he wants—but he can’t move faster than thought.

  Suddenly Vindatri was still, figure tense, fighting off an unseen assault. DuQuesne—tell Wu to hit the deck, and you too!

  He didn’t question her; she felt the order go out, and let her own savage grin show as she flung her arm up over her head. “Wrath of God!”

  Astrella’s weapon, that she had worn on her wrist for so long she didn’t even think about it—detonated, firing a starburst of ring-carbon needles trailing superconducting cable. As she had hoped, with DuQuesne hammering his mind, Vindatri’s physical defense had dropped for just a few moments, and one of the needles struck home; instantly the others curved about, swung in, and drove inward.

  Through those cables surged not just Ariane’s natural electric-eel derived shock, but all the power of lightning she could throw from the powers Vindatri himself had taught her. The superconducting wires suddenly flared and exploded, but not before delivering what amounted to a full-on bolt of lightning directly to the alien would-be god.

  Vindatri was hurled backwards, convulsing with the shock, and Wu Kung was up in that moment; his staff swung like a baseball bat and caught the staggered Vindatri perfectly in his midriff, folding him up and pitching him straight into the far wall to create another dent in the alien alloy. She could sense DuQuesne hammering against Vindatri’s mind with all the iron, unbreakable will that his Hyperion design had implied. We still haven’t been able to give Marc his few seconds.

  But Vindatri was rising, holding off the assault, and with a gesture stopped Wu Kung in midair, sent him flying in the opposite direction. “Mundane and empowered together, a wise and innovative choice, Captain Ariane Austin,” Vindatri said in a voice whose pain was rapidly fading. “You are beginning to coordinate, to recognize your only chance is in a union I cannot begin to match. But it takes thousands of nytill, an entire hive, to pull down one person. There are but three of you, and all you achieve so far is to show me how very important it is that I learn everything about you!”

  Dammit. This guy makes Amas-Garao look like a pushover. But…

  But…

  She could feel the power, that same strength that had been unleashed twice beyond her control, waiting within, a roiling inchoate mass of energy that was vastly beyond anything she had yet reached.

  If I can figure out how to tap that…

  We all have that somewhere, DuQuesne’s voice agreed, tensely. Wu’s getting stronger every minute. I think I am, too. We’ve got a chance.

  But as the dark energy she had sensed rampaged through the room and sent her and her friends flying, made her twitch and scream as in a seizure of acid and ice, she knew the real question was whether any of them would live long enough to take that chance.

  Chapter 46

  “Lead elements are about to clear obscuration. If the enemy is not blind throughout their eye, they will spot us in the next several minutes,” Alztanza said.

  “Once all four forward elements of the formation are clear enough to guide, I want the whole formation to go to charging speed,” Dajzail said. “Give our enemies as little chance to prepare as possible.”

  “What distance should we begin engagement?” Alztanza asked.

  “You’re the Fleet Master; I leave that to you.”

  “Understood.” He studied the display, which was now showing with increasing detail and precision the layout of the enemy forces. “Currently we have located …six major enemy vessels, plus the fortresses around the Sky Gates. They have many Sky Gates—eight, to be exact.”

  He heard his own buzz of surprise. “That will require a bit more to secure than we had originally calculated. And also makes this Sphere even more valuable. But they must have more than six major vessels.”

  “Closer to ten, perhaps as many as fifteen, though I incline to the smaller number based on both our prior intelligence and the preliminary data our scouts transmitted. While this makes little difference on the scale at which our fleet is operating, I am still not comfortable not knowing the location of perhaps half my opponents’ fleet.”

  “The six seem grouped fairly closely near the Sky Gates.”

  “Hm. Yes, that actually makes sense. They have some outer patrols. But with only four ships in the patrol—”

  “—yes. Their chance of detecting us was always very low, and now it is too late.” Alztanza gave an amused chuckle. “Not that it would make much difference.”

  Dajzail watched as Alztanza opened up an encrypted Fleet channel. “Ship Masters, this is Fleet Master Alztanza speaking for Leader Dajzail. Upon all four elements—Claws and Mouths—reporting clear forward, the entire formation is to go to charging speed. Maintain radio buoy relay deployment to assure communications.

  “Engage the enemy at five hundred kilometers, or when first they mount an effective attack.”

  Dajzail nodded after a moment of consideration. Major warship-class missiles could strike at ranges of up to two thousand kilometers, and very powerful energy weapons could engage at about half that range—but to penetrate the defenses of large warships even such cannon required either good fortune, or much closer range. Hypersonic cannon were even more limited with a range no greater than approximately three hundred kilometers. A shame that the limitations of the Arena effectively mean that most species have already reached, or at least approached, the peak of reasonable weapons development even before they enter. The basic rules of weapons engagement had not changed for millennia, at least.

  Alztanza was taking a slight risk—the enemy could easily wait until they were within, say, a thousand miles and then unleash many missiles and hope for fortunate shots with energy cannon—but the Fleet Master was obviously hoping that the human undercreatures would also want to wait for closest approach so as to be able to strike with maximum effective firepower.

  Dajzail actually doubted that would happen—the sight of a force so huge approaching would undoubtedly panic almost anyone, and they would want to do their best to destroy as many ships as they could as soon as possible. But Alztanza probably knew that, which is why he allowed engagement as soon as the enemy really began to fight back.

  The attacking force (measured from the forward points) was nine thousand, two hundred and seventy kilometers distant from the Sky Gates when the lower Mouth finally broke cloud cover. Moving as smoothly and steadily as though welded into a single unit, the Claws and Mouth formation accelerated to full charging speed.

  “Beautiful maneuvering, Alztanza. You really have them well-drilled.”

  “Credit to the Ship Masters; they’ve drilled a lot along the way.”

  “How long before we reach engagement distance?”

  Alztanza checked instruments. “We are limited of course by the slowest elements of the assault force, so can barely reach the lower limits of the hypersonic range; engagement will be in …one hour and twenty-six minutes.”

  “And the battle?”

  The big Molothos gave a wry chuckle. “The event we have come all this way for? Even with eight Sky Gate fortresses, I would be surprised if it lasts for a third of that. In less than two hours, the Faction of Humanity will be broken and crippled before the power of the Molothos.”

  Dajzail very much liked the sound of that
. “And enough time to have a few bites before coming back to the main engagement. Care to join me, ’Tanza?”

  “I’d be honored.”

  Despite his rapidly-rising optimism, Dajzail did not break out the celebratory ithyan and amakka yet. Long experience had taught him that premature celebration of victory was exceedingly unwise, and tempting the unknown chance of the Arena? He refused to be that foolish, though others might call his thoughts superstition.

  He could not, he found, quite shake a niggling feeling of worry as his mind kept coming back to two facts:

  Blessing of Fire had been a powerful, modern exploration warship, just like Claws of Vengeance. It had been commanded by a well-trained crew, veterans of many ventures into the Deeps.

  And yet two human beings had somehow defeated that ship and her entire crew.

  Ahead of them were thousands of those unpredictable undercreatures.

  But he shoved that concern to the back of his mind. This was a fully prepared assault force, ludicrously larger than any that would have been reasonably expected. Everything had been taken into account.

  Finally, as they were clearing the platters, Alztanza looked up. “Past two thousand kilometers. No fire so far.”

  “Shorter range missiles won’t be able to reach until our people are almost half that distance in.”

  “True. They will probably initiate their first assault then, at about twelve hundred kilometers from the Gates.”

  The speaker went live. “Fleet Master, the six vessels are moving.”

  “Course and likely destination?”

  “Acceleration is slow; judging by their maneuvers, concensus is that they are going to form an interception force ahead of the Sky Gates along our vector.”

  “Sensible, if futile. Begin closing Claws and Mouths.”

  “As you direct, Fleet Master.”

  Dajzail stood. “Let us go to the command deck. I wish to watch this directly.”