All-Patron Reward: My Favorite Scenes: Shadows of Hyperion

With this post, we reach the end of my published novels, so this will be the last My Favorite Scenes (at least for a while). 

Shadows of Hyperion is the fourth and currently last in the Arenaverse series. It was published following a successful Kickstarter, and starts us on the way towards completing the series itself. 

In Shadows of Hyperion, I decided to grab the Hyperion bull by the horns; that fifty-year-old project had been one of the hidden drivers of the plots for three books, and it was all coming to a head. As such, this book had a lot of really fun and, I think, awesome scenes in it, featuring characters old and new. My favorite scene features old and new characters and a new point of view, when Oasis gets to show why, despite not being an overtly superhuman being like DuQuesne or Wu Kung, she is still a terrifyingly formidable force... and when we get to see our newest Hyperion stretch her wings, too. 

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Are you sure this is safe?

Oasis was bone-weary now. Evading pursuit, and purging the contamination of poisons and nanos, had taken grueling hours that combined bursts of effort to strain even her Hyperion capabilities with absolute immobility that most living things could not have matched.

Even that would not have been good enough, of course, had not Mentor been there, slipping ghostlike through the multiplicity of systems in the fusion plant, using both standard and extremely unorthodox methods to divert pursuit, scramble nanotech communications, blind internal sensors while suppressing alarms. From what little he had been able to tell her along the way, he was himself pursued by AIs fully his equal; it was fortunate that none of the systems of the plant required anything beyond a T-5 to operate.

Certainty lies far beyond my inadequate talents, Oasis Abrams, Mentor responded. And safety is out of the question, except in the shortest term. We must act swiftly; one of our adversaries has already completed their transfer, and the other is in process.

Can't we call in help? We know what's up now, there'd be no problem getting this place raided.

Indeed, the first action I undertook when I saw the trap sprung against you was to attempt to contact the available law enforcement SFGs and the nearest representatives of the CSF.  The impression of a headshake. While we have been able to evade direct capture, our adversaries were able to completely lock down the complex; I believe they have even powered down the external accesses completely. This may cause someone to investigate eventually, but I give only a seven point three percent chance that this will happen prior to full transfer of the third and final Hyperion intellect to their new body.

Oasis took a deep breath and concentrated. I'm not Marc or Wu Kung. But still… She remembered hundreds of fights, hair-raising missions, impossible infiltrations. Still, I am a fictional secret agent. That's a power by itself, isn't it?

Oasis let K come to the fore… and realized that, sometime in the last year or two, the two had finished what they had started five decades before. "K" was no longer a separate voice, Oasis wasn't a different woman from K. Letting her come forward…

Was just like opening her eyes.

The scene around her sharpened, became brighter, suffused at the edges with hints of colors that could have been the edges of an animation. There's always a way, she thought, and realized that it was true—it had to be true.

She crawled forward, her slender body fitting just between the huge pipes and the ceiling; when she came to joins between the pipes, she sometimes had to squeeze her way through, but the structure provided her with this narrow, literal high-way back to the central room.

It shouldn't have worked so well, of course. The Oasis part of her knew that, but desperately repressed itself to keep from interrupting her focus on the impossible. Even with Mentor diverting and fogging perceptions, she shouldbe detected any of a dozen ways. But, somehow, she wasn't.

She found herself freezing as a spider-shaped robot stalked along the corridor behind her, scanning, moving a step, scanning. Without thinking about it, she eased a steel ball from a pouch, pitched it noiselessly toward the bend in the corridor.

The robot whipped around at the clatter, all senses focused on the sound; Oasis dropped onto the top of the thing and jammed a connector into its external port. The robot went rigid, frozen for ticks of time that seemed to stretch into eternity before it suddenly relaxed and a familiar voice said Complete control has been established, Oasis Abrams in her headware.

That absolutely should not have worked.

No, agreed Mentor with a cheerful undertone. In no fashion should it have worked. Yet such a maneuver is entirely in keeping with your fictional origin – as is our obvious next move – and it appears that this, itself, is your power: to enforce, insofar as may be, the rules of heroic dramatics in your own context.

His voice became grim. Do not assume that it makes you invincible, however. There are darker dramatics, and villains of various types rely upon them. You are not the only player on the board, and thus may not be, how should we put it, the star of the moment.

"No," she murmured. "I know. There were a couple of pretty dark reboots of my own story, let alone others. But we've got a shot, now."

With Mentor having given her control over the robot, she managed to insert herself inside the service access for the device; it was cramped indeed, but she could put up with it for the few minutes needed.

Following its precise mechanical gait and path, the robot stalked its way through the corridors, past doors that opened at its approach, and finally…

The huge central chamber was there before her.

Little had changed since she left; shards of transparent ring-carbon still littered the area from the observation deck above, and the great T-14 frame still squatted at the far side, cables from each reactor strung to it, providing it with triply-redundant power.

A small, slender figure was chained up against the central casing of the first reactor, brown hair spilling over her unmoving face. Search as she might, though, Oasis could see no sign of DuQuesne.

But I've just got to get close enough. She had a plan – a couple of them, actually – but ultimately all of them required one thing: the T-14 had to be shut down. She took a breath, preparing herself to act.

"Ahh, Oasis, I am so glad you decided to rejoin us," came the warm, rich voice from the other end of the room. At the same time, five – six – no, a dozen spider-robots dropped to surround her, as automated weapons emplacements unfolded.

Well, crap.

In that instant, she knew she was trapped. There wasn't the faintest chance she could escape again.

There was only one option.

Oasis Abrams launched herself from her hiding place, scattering a handful of pellets that detonated, sending clouds of nanosmoke everywhere – nanos to cloud the vision and senses of anyone that wasn't her. She slapped one of her shaped charges – the ones she'd originally intended for the windows high above – onto the nearest spider, then leaped up, riding the shockwave in an impossible arc that sent her flying fifteen meters into the air.

Automated weapons tracked her, firing, and she was in free-fall, her every motion computed, known. It was utterly impossible for them to miss.

Somehow she twisted her body, shifted in midair, and energy beams passed her, some missing by so tiny a fraction of a millimeter that the nearby radiance left scorches on clothing, hair, or skin – but missing, leaving her untouched. Her return fire struck the tiniest joints, unarmored areas that should have been impossible to hit, and the turrets exploded with the violence of superconductor coils suddenly torn apart.

She landed, extending a staff from its hidden pouch, a staff that she realized with distant wonder was somehow stronger and heavier than it had been hours before, and smashed the staff precisely into the sensing array of the next spider, blinding it. It fired at the sound of her landing, but she had rolled in that instant, and its own armor-piercing weapons shattered a comrade.

She saw the way the beams and fountains of metal death tore her adversaries apart, and saw one possible path to victory.

Oasis threw herself forward, towards the squat monolith of the T-14 frame, seeing projected above it a smiling urbane face, a blond man with a glint of something else in his blue eyes, as she slid beneath the next crossfire. Weapons spumed harmlessly from the T-14's sides; it had been armored to withstand direct assaults.

Two more of the spiders closed with her, and she kicked out, unbalancing one, causing the next to leap aside to avoid collision, and pitched her next charge high and true.

The detonation tore apart the farthest cable, severing its connection to the T-14; the eyes of the projected figure snapped up, and a frown appeared.

The spiders scuttled forward and she desperately scrambled away, bounding and somersaulting and jumping. I can get the second from here –

The next blast was so close she felt the heat on her face – and felt, also, the pouch carrying the last of her explosive charges fall away, its straps severed. One of the spiders threw itself onto the bag, preventing her from recovering it, and two others' weapons swung towards her.

Then just maybe –

Their shots went high as she dove downwards and between, but the one she went under pivoted, incredibly nimble on metal legs, and swung its gun down towards her, spitting edged death in a sweeping arc.

Oasis stepped forward, caught at the weapon, lifted and pushed with every ounce of her Hyperion-augmented strength.

And the chattering automatic fire blew into and through the second main power cable, cutting it almost exactly in half; one part fell almost in front of her, with the other falling behind, sparking into one spider which convulsed and fell, half its circuits burned out.

One more left –

But something caught her leg as she leapt, gripped with steel pincers, and she was slammed to the concrete floor. Two more sets of claws caught her up with crushing force, and a third set stripped away her pouches, badly damaging the rest of her clothing. Oasis struggled, throwing her entire body into the effort, but it was useless; all she managed to do was bruise and cut herself against her captors' steely grip.

The three spiders stalked across the floor, lifting her up to see the smiling face gazing down at her.

"Spectacular," he said. "Oh, that was truly a fine performance, Oasis. I was quite impressed. Two of three connections severed, and I sincerely believe that with one-tenth of a second more on that last landing you could have gotten the third."

Suddenly the projected eyes shifted, and Oasis risked a glance over her shoulder.

The second power cable had come to rest against the great mass of the reactor shell. The figure chained there twitched… and there was a click that echoed throughout the room, followed by a clangas the electronic lock and chain released.

Oasis felt the chuckle rolling up from deep within her. "So, tell me, oh King of Wolves: was it you or your partner who was stupid enough to chain Davia the Dynamo against a fusion generator?"

Sparks began to dance about the slender woman's figure, and her head slowly came up, a smile playing about her mouth. Electricity pulsed up her arms, glowing beneath her clothes, crawling towards something in the center of Davia's chest.

"Shutdown – now!" came the voice from the T-14 frame, and the sparks vanished – along with all light, except the glow from the remaining spiders' eyes… and the projection atop the frame.

The smile glittered. "The storage coils in this frame will suffice to make the transfer complete. And without a source of electricity…" the voice trailed off.

Blue-white light shone from Davia's body, the center of her chest now burning with the electric fire of her Heartflame. Her eyes opened as her head rose fully, and Oasis felt a thrill go through her as those eyes met hers.

"Too late," Davia said, and the simple words shook the room like the shout of a giant as sky-blue fire exploded around her. From pure electric energy, armor condensed, clothing the figure that now floated six feet from the ground in invulnerable gleaming metal of sapphire and gold, a white mask with red highlights shielding Davia's face, a pair of streamers dancing in the electric wind as her hair rose about her in a corona.

The face above the AI frame was no longer human, but a monstrous thing of bladed teeth and blazing eyes and shaggy fur, but it could not move.

A brilliant smile flashed out from the floating figure. "DY-NAMIC!"

A dozen electric serpents coiled up around Davia the Dynamo, hissing and spitting violet sparks, and then struck outwards, slashing into and through the robots, scattering them like windblown leaves. Two struck the casing – and vanished. "My enclosure is well grounded," the monstrosity said. "And would you endanger my vessel?"

The front of the enclosure had opened, and on a plinth within, surrounded by uncountable wires, lay a man.

Davia merely grinned, and a ball of spitting, sparking power materialized, at first the size of a pea, then of a marble, a baseball, growing, growing, until the blazing sphere lit the room like a second sun. "Let's see how well I can hit a stationary target, then."

The floating image snarled in rage and fear as Davia drew back her arm. "Thunderball!"

The globe of condensed lightning streaked across the room. For an instant – just a momentary image in the sharp-edged shadows of that sliver of time – Oasis thought she saw one hand of the sprawled figure twitch, and, with eerie simultanaeity, the trailing end of one of the cables connected to the frame curl up, almost into a clawed hand.

But then the room went white, and there was a scream of fury and terror – a scream that cut off in the cataclysmic detonation of Davia's power. Oasis was catapulted across the room, skidding over the floor and fetching up against a pipe so hard she saw new and completely internal flashes.

A moment later, she felt herself being helped to her feet, and looked up into Davia's eyes.

"Damn you're good, Oasis," Davia said.

"Not too bad yourself, Dynamo," Oasis grinned back weakly. Her knees suddenly felt like they were composed entirely of loose rubber.

But the emergency was over – at least for the moment. Where a T-14 frame had been was a smoking mass of charred slag, mute testimony to Davia the Dynamo's power – and pinpoint control, for though smoke and ruin lay all about, the unconscious man on the slab within the wreckage was untouched.

"Come on. We've got to see if Giles is all right," Davia said, moving towards the remains of the T-14. "And then…" her face went grim.

"Yeah," Oasis said, forcing her legs to support her. "Marc."

"And there is another problem, Oasis Abrams," said Mentor through her headware.

Wonderful. "Hit me with it."

"Our escaped adversary sealed the building, including independent seals on the doors."

"You can't just open them?"

"Alas, that lies beyond my powers, diminished as they are; our enemy was fully aware of my presence and interference by that point in time, and the seals were selected specifically to prevent me from doing so."

She stopped at the plinth, looking down at the unconscious form of the plump, nondescript man on it. "Can you escape, Mentor?"

A momentary pause. "Yes, now that there is no active opposition to me, I can transfer myself. Shall I fetch help?"

"Yes – no!" Oasis managed a faint smile. "First get to someone we trust – Saul, I'd guess, on Kanzaki-Three – and let them know what happened here. They need to know, and if something happens to us…"

"Understood. I can arrange for assistance afterward."

"No need," she said, a smile growing on her face. "We've got our way out."