All-Patron Reward: My Favorite Scenes 2: Boundary, Grand Central Arena, and Threshold

Continuing this series of posts, we now move to my overall best-sellers. Following Digital Knight and Diamonds are Forever, Eric Flint gave me the opportunity to write a hard-SF novel in collaboration with him, and the result was Boundary. 

Boundary is a much less action-oriented and far more thinking-oriented book than most of my other works. It is a classic hard-SF novel of human beings mostly opposed by the very nature of space exploration. Nonetheless, it has some good scenes of action, such as the out of control crash of John Carter on Mars, and other exciting moments such as the discovery of the Bemmie archives. But I think, overall, it's this scene that's my favorite, when their initial exploration of the Bemmie caverns becomes suddenly deadly....

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Madeline came last, walking down the ice-coated corridor carefully, to keep from slipping. She was quite a ways behind them because she'd stopped to study the wall at one point.

The ceiling collapsed.

***

To Madeline, time seemed to freeze. The fact that the great slabs of ice fell more slowly than they would have on Earth just made the coming doom a bit more protracted. Even three-eighths of a ton, multiplied by untold tons, is a crushing weight.

If time seemed frozen, her brain wasn't.

She saw A.J., Rich, and Helen ahead of her—facing the wrong way, and too far in any case to be able to reverse direction and escape. They were now almost at the far end of the tunnel.

They weren't in immediate danger, because Madeline could now see that only the central area of the tunnel was caving in. That was the part right above her.

She glanced back and saw that she had no time to make it out herself, even if the supports beyond the tunnel held and the entire cave system didn't come down. And even if she could, the other three would be trapped.

She might—barely—be able to race to shelter with them at the far end, assuming she didn't slip on the treacherous footing. But that would just leave all four of them trapped.

With not much oxygen left, only the water in their small sip tanks, and no food. And only Bruce and Joe—and him with a broken leg—to try and get them out. With, even leaving aside the fact they'd have asphyxiated by then, not more than forty hours they could count on the suits remaining powered. Once the batteries were dead, they'd freeze within minutes.

In the very short time it took her to finish that assessment, the slabs had come more than halfway down. There was only one possible chance left, slim as it might be. She took a step forward, stopped, planted her legs, extended her arms at what she guessed was the best angle, and braced herself.

The ice arrived.

***

A moaning, grumbling noise echoed through the tunnel. A.J. spun to see the roof coming down, seeming to break in two directly above Madeline's head. She threw up her arms as huge slabs of ice and fragments of rock suddenly crashed down on her.

A ghostly blast of white-red dust filled the corridor. A.J. felt himself dragged backward by Helen, away from the collapse. The two of them tripped over something. They fell to the floor and lay there, expecting to see the roof come down on top of them also.

"Madeline! A.J.! Helen!" Joe's voice came faintly over the radio. "Are you all right? What's happening down there?"

Dust fogged the air so thickly that A.J. felt an impulse to cough or hold his breath, despite the fact that none of it could possibly get to him. His voice was strained when he answered.

"Cave-in, Joe. Me and Helen seem to be okay." The rumbling had faded away. The ceiling in this far area of the tunnel seemed solid enough. He looked at Helen, who blinked wide-eyed back at him. For a moment the two just held each other. He saw Rich picking himself up. He was apparently what they'd tripped over. "Rich is okay too."

"What about Madeline?"

It was starting to sink in. "Jesus... She was smack in the middle of the tunnel when it came down."

He heard a choking sound from Joe, a sound filled with so much pain that it caused his own eyes to sting. "I'm going to take a look, Joe. We really don't know anything yet."

Despite that attempt at reassurance, A.J. had no real hope that Madeline was still alive, as he groped his way toward where she'd been. Ice dust still drifted thick as smoke in a burning building in the corridor. He couldn't see anything, although he could sense Helen and Rich following him.

"I can't see anything at all yet. Place is filled with ice dust. Some rock dust too, looks like. Hold on..."

He could now make out vague dark shapes in the beam of his light. "Clearing up slowly. Probably all blocked, but I'll get as close as—"

He broke off sharply. Just stared, wide-eyed.

Helen and Rich came up beside him. "Holy..." Rich started to say, but trailed off, unable to finish.

Helen said nothing at all. Just shook her head, back and forth, like a metronome.

Finally, A.J. cleared his throat, very loudly. "I swear, I swear, I swear. I will never again made a wisecrack about Supergirl. "

Madeline stood in the center of the corridor, her arms stretched up and out to either side at perhaps a sixty-degree angle. Her hands held up two huge slabs of ice which, in turn, prevented most of the ice above from erasing the entire corridor like a bubble from a wad of dough.

They heard a gasp from her. Now that the ice dust was clearing away, A.J. could see that Madeline's eyes looked as wide as his felt.

"W-what do you know..." she said shakily. "It worked. For now, anyway."

"What? What worked? How the hell are you holding up all that? Dammit, you're not that strong. Three-eighths gravity be damned. No human being who ever lived is that strong!"

By the end, he was almost screeching. A.J. realized he sounded half-hysterical; relief, terror, incomprehension all mingled in his high-pitched demand. Somewhere in the background, but not really grasping the words, he could hear Joe hollering words that combined relief and demands for a coherent report.

"No, I'm not." Madeline took a slow breath, settling her own nerves. "But I thought the suit might be."

The dazzling Fathom smile came. Even shining through her faceplate, it seemed to light up the whole tunnel. "I remembered what you did with Joe, after he broke his leg."

Enlightenment burst over A.J. "Mother of God. You made your whole suit go to rigid impact mode and lock that way. With mostly carbonan components... yeah, it could work. Genius. Pure effing genius."

He finally understood, now, why Hathaway had been so insistent that Madeline accompany them.

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With Boundary looking to be a success, Baen gave me the go-ahead for a solo novel, and  that novel turned out to be my most successful solo work to date: Grand Central Arena. 

Choosing my favorite scene in GCA is nearly impossible. I was working hard to stuff as much sensawunda into that book as I possibly could. I'll cheat, instead, and choose two: one that's purely for the sense of wonder, the first true understanding of what the Arena was, and one that's my favorite action scene in the entire book.

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Scene 1:

Orphan led them to the railing. When they were all gathered, he turned. "Captain Austin. Doctor DuQuesne. Doctor Sandrisson. Behold the Arena." He gave a sweeping outward gesture, and the wall suddenly became transparent.

Ariane gave an inarticulate cry and barely kept herself from stumbling back from the rail; she saw DuQuesne's hands tighten, and Sandrisson did step back, almost seeking shelter behind her and DuQuesne.

Before them was a vast skyscape, a twining, roiling sea of air and cloud, brown and black and white and green, extending beyond the reach of sight in all directions. Through this atmosphere swam tiny shapes, some dimmed by haze of distance, that seemed no more than a meter long, finned or sailed things like strange fish. Then one of them suddenly appeared to the left, emerging from a cloud in majesty, trailing streamers of mist from spars and masts, a titanic ship a kilometer long, lights blinking on its extremities, a distorted image of the massive, impossibly huge Nexus Arena reflected on the polished bronze-colored hull. As it passed, Ariane could see a bridge or forward observation deck, through which tiny figures were visible moving about. In the deepest distance, scarcely visible through the murk and gloom, another spark of light was seen, near to some monstrous shape, a shadow against shadow, of a Sphere that could envelop a world.

"Behold the Arena." Orphan repeated, more quietly, almost reverently. "The endless skies, the worlds that drift in cloud and light and shadow, a place where storms a million million kilometers wide clash above and around embattled Spheres, where trading ships and pirates and mercenaries travel beside, prey upon, and defend explorers, decadent tourists, lost souls searching for a home or a cause, armadas finding new worlds to conquer, and all, all of them looking, watching, asking for news… news of First Emergents, of ancient ancient ruins atop a lost Sphere, of rumors of Voidbuilder knowledge or Shadeweaver powers… and all of them returning here to hear that news, to behold the newcomers – and perhaps to Challenge them, or be themselves Challenged, and gain or lose all in a single contest. It is my home. Now it is yours."

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And Scene 2 -- which I call "DuQuesne's Awakening"....

The Molothos had drawn closer, snaring them in a ring of armored monstrosities. "Here in the area we claim, you are in gravity half again what you knew. You have no more weapons save those you hold in your hands and will be slow and easily slain by my warriors. You will talk, for we can make you do so, and you will be begging for your life to end sooner, if you make me wait much longer."

That is it. The absolute living end. Torture Carl to get me to talk so you can kill me later? No way in hell! As he thought this, he finally let go of all the restraints, the fear and the control he'd spent so many decades to hammer into place, let loose everything he'd feared, all the difference that had separated him from the rest of the world.

For a moment, he felt both as though he stood outside himself, and that he was suddenly more himself than he had been in fifty years, both terrified and transported by what was happening. I'd forgotten… forgotten what I was. I was so good at repressing the memory, at denying my own past, that I'm now almost unable to grasp who I am. What it feels like to be… what I was.

It feels… good.

His head snapped up and he glared straight into Maizas' yellow-glowing eye. Something in his stance and gaze registered even with the aliens; the troopers raised their weapons and Maizas took a slight step back.

Marc C. DuQuesne sneered at Maizas, holding the alien's gaze. "That would be a good trick, if you could manage it," he said contemptuously. "But you've got it all just… exactly… backwards."

With a sudden movement, he leapt into the air, two hundred kilos in over one and a half gravities doing a standing jump that took him three meters into the air. As he'd expected, Carl dropped to the ground, obviously shocked at what DuQuesne was doing but equally certain he needed to be out of the way. One of the troopers, hair–trigger reflexes overstrained, fired, spraying his compatriots with bladed death. The wounded one went down in a fountain of blood as the flechettes found the chinks in his armor. DuQuesne landed squarely on Maizas' back, the impact driving the body to the ground. The troopers hesitated, fanning out but afraid to fire with their commander in the way. "Your mistake, you pea-brained overbearing pompous crayfish, is that you think you have any idea of what you're dealing with."

As Maizas struggled to rise, he took advantage of that, bounding with the alien's own strength aiding him from Maizas' back to the next trooper, catching the striking claw as he descended and then twisting his body just so, wrenching the claw around, hearing both tech and natural armor creak and split under the force. He brought both heels down as hard as he could in landing, the concussion transmitted through the armor breaking the carapace underneath. The Molothos gave an unbelieving agonized shriek as DuQuesne vaulted from him to the next arachnoid creature, tearing the gun in its tendrils away so forcefully that one tendril stretched and tore apart.

The other tendril and striking claw caught at him, and the shredding mouth seemed far too close; instead of biting, though, it shrank away, closing up. Interesting, he thought, as the thing tried to pound him to pulp with the striking claws; instead, it found the human catching the other claw and holding it immobile while forcing the first claw back.

The other two Molothos troopers closed in from behind, and DuQuesne dropped to the ground just as four claws ripped through the air. Rolling to the side he went underneath the third trooper, then with a sudden effort grasped the underside of the carapace and rose to his feet in a single fluid motion, heaving the Molothos into its companions like flinging a sack of grain. As the three aliens tumbled and scrabbled to right themselves, he yanked the power pack from the alien weapon – the location of such a pack seemed obvious to him – and pitched it down the throat of the middle creature. Spiked lamprey-teeth contracted convulsively, and the superconductor storage cell paths were suddenly and disastrously disrupted; a sun-bright concussion blew DuQuesne four meters away as he tucked and rolled.

Rising to his feet, he glanced at Maizas, who was staggering backwards, disbelief written plainly in the alien body language, trying to make it to the low, long vessel behind him. He caught one of the alien's legs and yanked it backwards, so hard that it dislocated, and dragged the Scout Master right back where he'd come from. "Oh, I don't think so, Maizas," he said, feeling the cold, hard, freeing certainty once more, the knowledge that he was doing the right thing and that nothing in all the universe could stop him. "I told you you hadn't any idea what you were dealing with. I was raised in gravity more than half again yours. I was built by people so insane they didn't realize what kind of a monster they designed, and I've spent half a century hiding what I am." Peripherally he was aware of Carl's wide-eyed stare. "You brought it out, you son of a bitch. You made me let it out, and I don't know if I'll ever find myself again." He spun Maizas to face him, caught the two striking claws in his hands and squeezed hard, feeling the armor bending under the force. Hard black eyes reflected dimly from the surface of the wraparound yellow eye of the Molothos, but he could feel a quiver run through the creature, and not one of simple rage.

"You are going to tell me exactly and precisely everything that I need to know, and you are going to do it now, and you will not try to lie to me. Or else," he said, and grinned savagely, "you will find out how very much worse things can get."

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Following Boundary's success, of course, Baen also wanted more in that universe, and gave Eric and me a contract for two sequels. The first, Threshold, came out literally a month after Grand Central Arena.

 Threshold  was a slightly more action-oriented book than Boundary and featured some actual interpersonal conflict as well as contests against the impersonal power of the universe. There are quite a few scenes I consider really fun -- the heroic appearance of General Hohenheim at the last minute, poor Joe Buckley being shot with a meteor, and so on... but I think my number one choice is the triumph of the Geek God...

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Satisfied, Modofori inserted the power cell, switched the communicator on, and spoke. "Mr. Baker, are you there?"

The little screen lit up immediately. "Yes." A.J.’s eyes were chips of blue-green ice.

"As I respect your abilities, I will not spend much time in conversation. I will talk and you will listen. Currently you do not know where we are, and if you did you will not reach us before we move elsewhere. You are going to assist us in obtaining the information on fusion technology. You are then going to help us get to the Hunin unmolested. So that we may assure ourselves that we are not being ambushed, you will ensure that we have access to the sensors around the Hunin.While I am not your equal at sensors, I also assure you that I am capable of telling if you interfere with the actual data coming from the sensors in question, especially with the entire base apparently shut down. Once we are in the Hunin and ready to launch we will release your wife. Any deviation from this plan will result first in harm and finally in death for her. You must understand that while I have no interest in harming anyone, I can and will carry out my threats. We are in control in this situation, and you will do precisely as I instruct, unless you do indeed wish me to carry out those threats. Do you understand?"

A.J.’s expression had been impassive. Then it all of a sudden shifted, into a broad grin that somehow had very little humor in it. Even in the small screen, it gave Helen an involuntarily chill. "What I understand is that I don’t think I have ever heard anyone manage to be more completely wrong more often in a single speech, even our current president."

One of the larger screens over the nearest research station flickered, causing all of them to jump, and abruptly A.J.’s face, twice life-size, was glaring at the three; even Modofori couldn’t restrain a slight gasp. "I do know exactly where you are, and it will take me precisely three more minutes to get there. You will find you cannot go anywhere else. I will not assist you in obtaining any information, you are not getting to the Hunin, I’m giving you exactly zero access to anything except a jail cell, you wouldn’t be capable of telling whether or not I was inventing anything if I told you I was doing it ahead of time, and most importantly"—his voice dropped to a low tone that still somehow carried with it a snarl—" you cannot, and will not, touch Helen, because I am in control of this situation, and you will do precisely as I instruct, or else I promise…" and suddenly he smiled with just a touch of actual humor as he quoted, "...'You will know pain… and you will know fear… and then you will die.'"

At a gesture from Modofori, Jimmy grabbed her arm, forcing it up behind her back. "A nice speech, and I see we have less time than I thought. But I can carry out my threat."

A.J. raised an eyebrow. "I find your lack of faith… disturbing." His hand raised and gave a small gesture.

Helen felt Jimmy suddenly go rigid behind her. He gave a strangled cry and clawed at his throat. Helen knew she was staring, but doubted that her expression was any more dumfounded than Modofori’s. Alex Zaent, his face pale, pulled out a knife and started for Helen. "You cut it out, you son of a—"

Another gesture—a rippling gesture, the one she knew well from A.J.’s use of virtual controls—and Zaent screamed and collapsed, the knife falling from a hand that seemed limp and useless.

Suddenly Helen understood. Yanking off her glove, she looked down at her hand.

Her engagement ring glinted dully next to the bright gold wedding band, its oversized setting empty of anything except air.

Modofori recovered slightly, but his voice shook as he spoke. "How are you…?"

"Ever wonder why a lot of the Faerie Dust technology is restricted? Now maybe you know," A.J. said. "The dust I’m using isn’t meant for medical implantation, of course, so it won’t last long—but it’ll last long enough. It’s actually going to take me another few minutes to get there, but I want you to know that I will know everything that is happening in that room. If any of you so much as twitches in Helen’s direction again, I’ll stop your god-damned hearts." The screen went blank. Jimmy, now able to breathe, slowly rolled to hands and knees—away from Helen. The others backed away from her as well.

By the time the door opened a few minutes later, Helen was alone in the center of the room, with the three men against the wall as far away as they could manage. A.J. didn’t even look at them; he ran to her and hugged her tightly. "Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Helen, I thought I was going to lose you…" he whispered.

It was such a total change from the lethal man she’d seen on the screen just minutes ago that she just stood there, blinking stupidly, before hugging him back. "I was pretty scared myself," she said quietly. "And you scared the hell out of me just now, too."

"I scared the hell out of myself," he confessed. "I never knew what losing you would do to me until now."

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That's all for this month -- more next!