Challenges of the Deeps Read online

  Table of Contents

  What Has Gone Before

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  CHALLENGES OF THE DEEPS – eARC

  RYK E. SPOOR

  Advance Reader Copy

  Unproofed

  SEQUEL TO GRAND CENTRAL ARENA AND SPHERES OF INFLUENCE. The climax of the Arenaverse adventure SF series!

  The Arena: a vast alien otherspace that all species were forced to enter when they discovered faster-than-light travel. The Arena: where the lives of entire species might hang in the balance in a single Challenge. The Arena: filled with mysteries, alliances, betrayals, opportunities, and hideous dangers for individual and empire alike. And the only thing you couldn't do …was refuse to play the Arena's game.

  Ariane Austin and her crew had learned these lessons the hard way, and—with luck, skill, and sheer will, had managed to survive so far. But now a debt of honor to Humanity's oldest, if sometimes self-serving, ally Orphan has come due. The threat of war looms with the xenophobic Molothos, one of the five Great Factions; the dark and omnipresent legacy of the Hyperion Experiment lingers. As Leader of the Faction of Humanity, Captain Ariane Austin had to deal with all of these problems, and deal with them soon. For within her was also the alien power that the Shadeweavers and the Faith had sealed away—with a seal that would not last forever. She needed to find a way to control that power before it broke free—or more than just Humanity would pay the price.

  Now Ariane must travel with Orphan into the legendary Deeps of the Arena, far from any known Spheres—to a destination only the enigmatic alien knows, leaving behind one of her most trusted friends and advisors to confront whatever new trials the Arena may throw at Humanity in her absence.

  But before Ariane can depart, she must deal with a minor matter of a Challenge against one of the Great Factions—a Challenge with an entire species' citizenship in the Arena at stake!

  Baen Books by

  Ryk E. Spoor

  Digital Knight

  Paradigms Lost

  Grand Central Arena Series

  Grand Central Arena

  Spheres of Influence

  Challenges of the Deeps

  The Balanced Sword Series

  Phoenix Rising

  Phoenix in Shadow

  Phoenix Ascendant

  Baen Books by

  Ryk E. Spoor and Eric Flint

  Boundary

  Threshold

  Portal

  Castaway Planet

  Castaway Odyssey

  CHALLENGES OF THE DEEPS

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Ryk E. Spoor

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN: 978-1-4767-8208-9

  Cover art by Alan Pollack

  First Baen printing, March 2017

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: TK

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Acknowledgements

  To Toni and Tony, for opening the doors to the Arenaverse once more

  To my Beta Readers, for feedback that kept me from making some really stupid mistakes

  To Morineko-zion, for her wonderful illustrations that have brought some of my characters to manga-style life

  To Keith Morrison, for his images and videos that made parts of the Arena live

  And to my wife Kathleen, for giving me the time.

  Dedication:

  First and always, this Arenaverse novel is dedicated to the man who embodied the Sense of Wonder that I seek to evoke in the Arenaverse: E.E. “Doc” Smith, creator of the original Marc C. DuQuesne in his Skylark series, and the even more influential Lensman series.

  Second, to the readers themselves, whose emails and messages have shown me that – at least for a few – I have managed to bring forth that wonder that was given to me.

  And lastly to all the other creators—of books, of movies, of television shows, of games and songs and music—whose creations have provided both foundation and inspiration for the creation of the Arena and all of its inhabitants.

  What Has Gone Before

  In Grand Central Arena, the Solar System of 2375 is a near-utopia, with limitless energy, nanotech replicators and AI freeing people to work, or play, as they wish, and the most minimally intrusive government humanity has ever seen; only the Wagnerian tragedy of the secretive Hyperion Project justified the need for a minimal military force. Dr. Simon Sandrisson believed he had found the key to one of the last great dreams of humanity: faster-than-light travel. Due to some odd anomalies with unmanned tests, Dr. Sandrisson gathered together a crew to perform the first manned test of the Sandrisson Drive, beginning with enigmatic but skilled power engineer Dr. Marc C. DuQuesne and ending with the recruitment of Ariane Stephanie Austin, a daredevil pilot for the Unlimited Space Racing league. With multiple redundant automated systems, Ariane’s presence was more a matter of form than anything else; aside from sports such as her own, human beings simply don’t pilot or drive vehicles in a serious context.

  But when the Sandrisson Drive was activated, every AI system—including the implanted AISages, self-aware companions that almost every adult human being has as a matter of course—shuts down, as does the nuclear reactor, and only Ariane’s racing reflexes prevents their ship, the Holy Grail, from colliding with the gigantic, impossible wall that appeared before them.

  The crew of the Holy Grail quickly discover that they are inside a huge, generally spherical construct twenty thousand kilometers across …with a moving replica of the Solar System in its center. No AI-level automation works, or indeed any automation above the extremely primitive. Despite all systems and conditions appearing normal, no nuclear reaction can be triggered. The Holy Grail, unfortunately, requires immense amounts of energy to activate the drive; unless they can find a source of power, they ma
y never be able to return home …and may not live more than a few months at best.

  Because she is one of only two unaffected by the loss of an AISage (the others in conditions ranging from shock to full-blown coma), and because she is the only crewmember without defined duties outside of piloting the ship, Ariane is made temporary Captain of the vessel, and they attempt to explore this alien structure. The others, with the exception of biologist Laila Canning, who remains unconscious, eventually recover from the loss of their AISage companions and are able to assist.

  Soon, they discover there are illuminated, livable areas within the construct …and suddenly find themselves forced to choose a side in a conflict between two seemingly-identical alien “Factions.” The humans manage to face down the group calling themselves the “Blessed To Serve”, partly due to the appearance of a mysterious cloaked figure called a “Shadeweaver”, and rescue the target of the Blessed, a green-and-black semi-insectoid alien called “Orphan.”

  Orphan proves to be a useful, if not necessarily trustworthy, resource, through whom the humans discover the true magnitude of the problems facing them. They are trapped in an otherspace, another universe that is simply called “The Arena” by its residents. In Orphan’s words: “It is a place where we all meet and challenge, where bargains are made and broken and avenged, where an alliance may be built on blood and fortune. It is a place where faith is lost, and where religions are founded or proven true. It is where you shall confront, and be confronted by, truths and lies, enemies and allies, belief and denial, impossibility and transcendence.”

  Any attempt to use an FTL drive in our native universe transfers the vessel to the Arena; the Arena has a Sphere for every solar system, a replica of every existing and possible native world for any species across all our universe, and some very strange—and equally incontestable—limits placed on all species in the Arena. No AIs. No nuclear power or similarly intense power sources (with some very limited exceptions). Any conflicts between species to be resolved by formal, or sometimes dangerously informal, Challenges whose stakes can be literal worlds.

  And humanity must win at least one such Challenge if they are to be accepted as citizens of the Arena, and have the chance to trade for the energy they need to return home. To somewhat counterbalance this, the Arena provides full and detailed translation capabilities to all, meaning that newcomers (“First Emergents”) are not handicapped by needing to learn to communicate, and there are certain limitations on Challenges which prevent a newly-arrived race from, for example, losing their entire homeworld in a Challenge; Challenge costs are directly proportional to the resources of a Faction, so a Challenge whose stakes might cost Humanity a ship could cost a Great Faction many hundreds of Spheres.

  With no other choice, Ariane, DuQuesne, and Simon accompany Orphan to Nexus Arena, where all species eventually meet and where the majority of the politics, and most Challenges, of the Arena are carried out. They meet several other important beings and species, ranging from Nyanthus, leader of the religious Faction called the Faith, to the militaristic and xenophobic Molothos, Ghondas of the Powerbrokers (who could provide the energy needed to go home), and Relgof Nov’Ne Knarph of the knowledge-focused Faction of the Analytic.

  The successful travel to Nexus Arena has opened what Orphan calls the “Upper Gateway” of humanity’s Sphere, which opens onto the “top” surface of the Sphere. This is actually a crucially important event, because the top of a Sphere is not a dead surface in vacuum; the interior of the Arena is filled with (mostly) breathable atmosphere, and every Sphere’s top surface is a livable area that is compatible with the native, dominant species of the solar system that it represents. By exploiting this surface, the stranded crew of Holy Grail can survive, and perhaps over time even find a way to generate their own return power, even if success in the Arena eludes them.

  It is decided that DuQuesne will return to the Sphere and, with controls specialist Carl Edlund and possibly medical doctor Gabrielle Wolfe, perform an initial survey of the part of the Upper Sphere surrounding the Upper Gateway; DuQuesne had recently been “outed” as a former result of the ill-starred Hyperion project, which made him much more physically and mentally capable than the vast majority of humanity, so his choice as the front-line explorer seems obvious.

  But their exploration hits an unexpected problem; the Molothos have—apparently by coincidence—found Humanity’s Sphere and are attempting to colonize the Upper Sphere themselves. DuQuesne and Carl Edlund are captured by the warlike aliens, but when they threaten to torture Carl to get DuQuesne’s cooperation in gaining access to the interior of the Sphere, DuQuesne releases all the controls he has on his Hyperion nature and destroys most of the small force of aliens that had captured them; with Carl’s help, he is able to devise a desperate but effective strategy to also take out the ship from which the Molothos had come, thereby protecting the secret of exactly where Humanity’s Sphere is from the invaders.

  It turns out that the Arena considers such a situation to be equivalent to a Challenge, and so DuQuesne’s victory makes the small human contingent full citizens of the Arena …at the cost of making one of the most powerful and dangerous Factions their enemies.

  Still, the crew of Holy Grail have little to trade. They need to find some way to convince or bargain with other Factions to get the energy needed to go home and tell the rest of Humanity that they are no longer alone in the universe, and dangerously so. Ariane soon finds herself first present at a strange ritual of the Faith that shows there are powers here they do not understand, when she sees a young member of the Faith named Mandallon elevated to the rank of Initiate Guide and manifesting energies that none of her instruments can make sense of. Shortly afterward, on her trip home, she encounters Amas-Garao, one of the enigmatic Shadeweavers, who also have apparently-magical powers and unknown motives and interests.

  Mandallon is committed to assist Humanity due to their status as First Emergents, and specifically to perform a service for Humanity if he can; Ariane, after ascertaining that such service isn’t enough to re-power the Holy Grail, asks if the Faith can help the still-unconscious Laila Canning. Mandallon performs a ritual which brings Laila back to consciousness and seems to have healed her …although for just a moment, Ariane thinks she sees something else in Laila’s gaze…

  Their first encounter with the Blessed had, of course, not left the Blessed To Serve positively inclined to Humanity, and this is demonstrated when the Blessed orchestrate a Challenge to Humanity. Ariane accepts and maneuvers the venue to Arenaspace racing, and despite some unfamiliarity with conditions, manages to win with an insanely risky tactic that takes her through a “Skyfall”—a cascade of debris found at the edge of the null-G areas of Arenaspace and the directed gravity surrounding every Sphere.

  Before she can claim the reward in the form of energy to return, Orphan is able to inform her that there is another catch: all of them cannot return. There must always be at least one person present in their Sphere from now on, or else their status as Citizens of the Arena will be revoked. Given this, Ariane chooses to have their Sphere secured against any unwanted intrusion by the Faith—a service to be paid by the Blessed, who have lost the Challenge.

  This choice of course severely disappoints the others, and precipitates the first real internal crisis, with the others arguing that Ariane had no right to make that choice without them. She points out that they made her Captain, and were perfectly happy to dump many other decisions or interactions onto her head, and if they didn’t want her to be the Captain they shouldn’t have done it in the first place.

  The others realize that Ariane is correct; DuQuesne, particularly mortified that he allowed himself to react against her that way, leaves to give himself a chance to cool down and figure out an appropriate way to apologize. But while walking, he encounters Amas-Garao, who invites him to see the Shadeweaver Faction House …and invites DuQuesne to join the Shadeweavers. The Shadeweavers like to have at least one member of every spe
cies, for this gives them great knowledge and insight into all species’ history and behavior.

  Unfortunately, when DuQuesne rejects the invitation, it becomes clear that Amas-Garao has made an “offer you can’t refuse.” The running battle through the Faction House demonstrates to DuQuesne’s shock that even a Hyperion is no match for a Shadeweaver. Fortunately, his first attempt at a distress call had gotten partially through, and Ariane has led a group to rescue him, arriving just in time. The ensuing battle is only won when Orphan—who had been thought to have fled in fear—returns and, somehow, partially negates Amas-Garao’s powers sufficiently to allow them to escape.

  The Shadeweavers’ influence makes things difficult for Humanity, despite some assistance from the Analytic and the Faith. Partly to take their minds from these issues, Ariane and company watch a Challenge between two expert Champions of Challenges, the immense yet nimble Sivvis of the Daelmokhan, and the tiny but powerful Tunuvun of the Genasi (a species native to the Arena, and not considered citizens). The ending of that Challenge showcases both creatures’ capabilities and their honor as well, leaving a strong impression on Ariane.