Spheres of Influence-eARC (40 page)

“And so you’ve damn well
earned
that Sphere, no matter what other…plans or motives or anything else may be behind you now, or in the future.” She dropped to the floor, and so did Simon and the others, even Marc and Oasis after a momentary pause. They all did the full pushup-bow. “Humanity
pays
its debts, Orphan, and we owed you something
very
big.” She got up and grinned. “I can’t quite figure out how to gift-wrap it, though.”

Orphan was staring at them, and for a moment he quivered. Then he sank to his knees, braced in a triangluar pose by his tail, and emitted noises that were translated more as sobs than anything else. Sethrik looked unsteady as well, but stood near his Leader, waiting for him to recover.

Simon was momentarily amazed by the reaction, but then light dawned.
I think I see. Orphan hasn’t had anyone show him such…generosity. Perhaps ever.

“My…my friends. My
true
friends. I…” Orphan paused. “I cannot describe my feelings,” he said, finally, “though perhaps my reaction gives some idea.

“Yes, I did choose to rescue you; but that had already brought me a new brother, who once had been a great enemy. I had never expected…this.”

“If you had, I probably wouldn’t have given it to you,” Ariane said bluntly, but with a smile that took some of the edge off. “You didn’t expect or ask for anything. You did this for yourself as much as for us—for your own self-respect, for the things you valued, and that told me a lot about you.” She grinned. “Besides, it’s not all
that
valuable right now. It’s not like you’re filling up a solar system—or much more than a metaphorical teacup, even—with your current membership.”

Orphan stood and his buzzing, rippling laugh echoed out. “Oh, most
certainly
, Captain Austin. Yet I still think I have gained far more than you—and I, at least, do not have to face the difficulties I suspect lie ahead of you in your own system.” He raised his glass. “So—in your own tradition—to Captain Austin!”

“To Captain Austin!” Simon repeated cheerfully.

Chapter 50.

“My
God!”

The words were wrenched from Ariane as she stepped through the final door to the Inner Sphere region nearest the place Steve had dubbed the Foyer.

The multiple rooms and tunnels were filled with people; the murmur of conversation of hundreds echoed through the halls. Where the huge rooms had been were now buildings, pathways, workshops, play areas—an incredible mishmash of everything that interested humanity, placed almost at random throughout the Inner Sphere—not just here, she could tell, but extending much farther through the Sphere and obviously to the Foyer area as well.

“That’s right, you haven’t been back here in a while,” Steve said. “More than a thousand people in permanent residence now, and with the work crews and SFG study groups and others I think it’s close to two thousand total, so we just expanded into this area too.” He grinned. “And
that
is with the CSF and SSC filtering it and our schedule controlling access to the Sphere.”

Ariane was, for a moment, utterly speechless.
It’s one thing to
hear
about it, another to walk
into
it.
Wu was also goggling a bit wide-eyed at the scene. The others seemed impressed, but not quite so surprised. After a moment, she realized why.
The last time I was here was right after we made the first trip with
Zounin-Ginjou
, a couple of months or so ago. Everyone else except Wu and me—even our prisoners—have been through here since then.

Before she could finish pulling herself together, a deep voice shouted out, “Ariane! Steve! Welcome back!”

Tom Cussler emerged from a nearby archway, waving, his dark skin standing out from the bright green outfit he’d chosen to wear that day. “I knew you were coming soon—why didn’t you let me know?”

“Because I hadn’t been paying attention, really, to how
busy
you must be getting. Sorry, Tom.”

“Don’t apologize. I heard about
your
little problems.” He levelled a quick glare at Oscar and Michelle, who were being escorted by an extremely vigilant Oasis.

Still doesn’t excuse my inattention to begin with. Well, Ariane, you finally realized what you need to be doing; don’t waste time beating yourself up over it, just get to
doing
it.
“So Steve tells me you’ve ended up running things?”

“No, no. Just…trying to keep things going smoothly. I help organize, really—it’s what I learned to do on a much larger scale with AISage help. While I
do
miss Maxine’s input,” he continued, referring to his own old AISage, “back then I was also coordinating a space station for over half a million people by myself. I can manage to help keep things going for a few thousand pretty easily.”

Three people came jogging up at that point. “Tom—” one began.

“Yes, David, I know it’s going to be difficult, but there really isn’t another practical path for that shipment. You’ll just have to close up everything and let them through.”

The man named David—and his two companions—looked pained. “Look, Tom, this is the fourth time this week! I can’t keep closing up every time—”

Cussler’s voice shifted from his usual friendly, professional tone to something just a
hair
sharper—and with about ten times the authority. “Dave, I understand it’s frustrating. But I
did
warn you about how heavily used that set of passageways was and how tight those alcoves were. You decided that the high traffic was an advantage. And from what I hear, you were right, overall; people going to and from the Upper Sphere are always grabbing snacks at your booths. This is the price you pay for being on that route. Now
please
don’t complain about this again. Either deal with it, or move. I know at least two other people who would
love
your spaces.”

David grimaced, then nodded; his two friends looked momentarily uncertain, but followed David as he left.

“You handled that well,” Ariane said. “What was that about?”

“Well? Eh. Acceptably, I suppose. David’s currently running a snack stop between the Inner Sphere and Upper Sphere, just before the Elevator. Right now it’s for interest vector and bragging rights, but he’s made some noises about maybe trying a real, honest-to-God business, a market stall somewhere in the Grand Arcade. He makes real good stuff, but he’s still relying on the AIWish type gadgets, so I don’t know how well he’ll do just on regular…ingredients, so to speak.”

Ariane nodded. “We could certainly use some people doing that kind of business. Right now our only presence in the Arena is through our Embassy. On the other hand, I’m
sure
that trying to establish and run a business in the Arcade is as much a shark tank as the politics of the Arena itself. What’s the big traffic here?”

A powered cart rumbled past, dragging something large enough to make them all squeeze agains the walls. “Basically two main sources of large shipments: the power station, which we’re expanding constantly, and the defense installations.”

“So we
are
getting some firepower up there? Good,” said DuQuesne emphatically.

“Quite a bit now, plus of course the ships that Orphan lent us.”

One
more
thing I should have been
making
myself keep up on.
“What
is
the status of our defenses?”

Tom turned and started down the corridor. “Come with me, I’ll show you.”

Ariane noticed how people waved, and made room, for Tom. She smiled suddenly.
That actually solves one problem I was wondering about.

They entered the Foyer; Ariane managed
not
to stop dead upon seeing the entire place almost filled with various buildings, and the formerly twisting artificial arroyos carved out into straighter roads.
Ha. I’ve started to get
used
to the challenges of the Arena, where you
can’t
go using nanotech or other tricks to get things done faster or more efficiently. But if they’re shipping in loads of charged batteries and the nanotech still works in here, of
course
they can get things done a lot faster.

Tom led them to the central building, which retained something of the look of the original little house that he and Steve had lived in during the time they were mostly alone on the Sphere…but was about ten times bigger. “Come on in,” Tom said, leading them into a semicircular living room more than large enough for all of them. He glanced at Oasis and the two prisoners. “You can lock them in the spare bedroom, down that hallway, second door on the left.” He tapped the side of his head and grinned. “I’ll know if they’re up to anything; put a security feed in there just for this.”

Oasis grinned back. Oscar Naraj’s lips tightened, but neither he nor Michelle Ni Deng said anything; they walked quietly in front of Oasis down the side hall; a moment later they heard the
click
of a lock, and Oasis reappeared, looking slightly more relaxed.

“Now that that’s settled,” Tom said, “Steve, you want to grab people some drinks while I set up?”

“Sure, Tom. You want your usual?”

“Sure. What’ll the rest of you have?”

Ariane restrained her instinct to hurry.
This is exactly the sort of thing I need to know about before I go back for the showdown, and a few hours, or even another day, won’t make a difference.
“Since we’ve got a full-template AIWish back there—how about a pomegranate martini?”

“Persephone’s Curse coming up,” Steve acknowledged. “What about the rest of you?”

While Steve got everyone else’s preferences, Tom Cussler gestured to empty air; lights began to flicker. “Let me fire up the displays.”

He remembered that I prefer to get information from my regular senses. I’ve gotten some better at taking straight downloads through my interface—it’s got a lot of convenience—but I
really
prefer doing it this way.
“Thanks for indulging me, Tom. I know it’s a pain.”

The broad shoulders shrugged. “Oh, not really. We’ve actually got a fair minority of people like you here, since we have been selecting for people who aren’t AISage dependent. Besides, it’s good training to keep these kind of skills; if any of us are leaving the Sphere for the rest of the Arena, we’d better know how to deal with it.”

A large screen covering the entire gently-curving wall across from where Ariane and the others were sitting lit up, became a three-dimensional display in which a model of Humanity’s Sphere (
one of three, now!)
rotated slowly.

“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.”