To Well And Back (The Deep Dark Well) (20 page)

“Yes, sir,” replied the
Major, noting that a priority message was coming through from the other side of
the mountain they had surrounded. 
What the hell now
, he thought, just
before all hell broke loose.

*     *     *

Watcher felt a smile
break out on his face as he looked at the deployments on his suit’s HUD. 
I
need allies
, he thought, watching the red dots start to move toward the
entrance to the caves his pizzos had shown him. 
And here they are.  Almost
makes me believe in a God
.

Then the smile turned
to a frown as he thought of his lover in the clutches of the beasts he was
about to unleash hell upon.  He hardened his heart and became the ultimate
warrior again; ready to deal death, quickly and efficiently.  [Go] he ordered
over his link, walking forward with his particle beam cannon in his hand.

Watcher had augmented
his suit of powered armor with add on packs for this fight, knowing that he
needed all the firepower and protection he could handle.  The suit was now
taller and thicker than it had been, towering three meters.  The heavy backpack
on the dorsal region of the suit contained a massive particle accelerator
system that fed by way of a wormhole into the multibarreled cannon, a much
larger weapon than before, that he held at hip level.  The accelerator was fed
already fast moving protons from the larger accelerator on the
Donut
through another small wormhole, while most of the heat buildup was removed the
same way through another hole, making the weapon as sustained fire as
possible.  The weapon system used all of the components of the smaller system
he had used at the pyramid, with add ons to make it much more robust.

The tanks were arrayed
in a triangle, floating ten meters above the jungle floor on automatic
systems.  There were always plenty of paths for the three meter wide machines. 
Maybe not free of all vegetation, but the vehicles were more than capable of
pushing through vines and branches, and anything that couldn’t be pushed
through could be burned away by the laser spots that dotted the outer surface
of the tanks. 

On the floor of the
jungle, in three squad formations, one behind Watcher, the others to either
side, were the thirty-six battlebots Watcher had brought to the party.  As
capable as the ones Pandora Latham had deployed, the bots looked like living
Maurids as they loped low to the ground on all fours.  Mounted on their backs
were the particle beams and lasers they were equipped with, and other weapons
lay in sheaths for use when they stood.  Four in every twelve bots in each
squad also carried a magazine fed rocket launcher.

The assault force
covered the distance between themselves and the Nation Marines in a quick
sprint.  The Marines did deploy rear security, but Watcher’s force was well
stealthed, moving quietly under invisibility fields.  There was of course some
noise, tanks moving through jungle cannot help but make a bit.  That still did
not alert them to the forces moving along the ground while their attention was
focused up by that noise.

First blood went to
Watcher, as he intended.  He spotted the hyper-velocity launcher team before
they spotted him, aiming as they were for one of his tanks that was overhead
and slightly to the rear.  Watcher pulled the trigger on his cannon and sent a
wide red beam at their position.  The buzzing sound turned the heads of many more
of the Marines as it cut through all the other noises of the jungle.  But soon
it was drowned out by the sound of a body exploding through its armored suit as
megajoules of energy were transferred into it, and of the tree trunk beyond
blowing out from the superheated sap within it.

Watcher swung the
weapon while the next barrel rotated into place, vaporizing the hyper-velocity
launcher and leaving pieces of the assistant gunner’s armor scattering through
the jungle.  The result was the other Marines opening fire on Watcher with
their own weapons, and in an instant high velocity rounds were bouncing from
his heavy armor after slowing through his electromagnetic field.  His suit
sensors registered some laser beams as well, and the superconductors built into
the outer shell shuttled that energy into yet another small wormhole heat sink.

Moments after the enemy
opened fire the robots and the tanks, now confronted with a target rich
environment, returned it.  Soon the air was filled with particle beams, lasers,
and high-velocity cannon rounds tearing into the positions of the Nation
Marines.

The Marines fought
bravely enough, continuing to return fire as they were overwhelmed position by
position.  They scored some hits on the tanks, totally ineffectual, and knocked
out two of the battlebots.  Everything they sent at Watcher was repelled by his
electromag field or the armor of his heavy suit.  And every hit scored on a
Marine was a killing shot.  Soon even their courage began to fail, and the
Marines on the flanks fled into the jungle, while those in the center could no
longer hold the tide and died in place.

[Under cover] ordered
Watcher to his robots.  [Form a defensive perimeter].  He looked back at the
tanks.  [Forward] he ordered them, walking to where he knew the entrance to the
cavern was.

The suit levitated into
the air, then moved forward to the entrance where waited some frightened
looking men in the uniform of the Suryan Navy, with a couple of armored Marines
by their side.  Watcher ordered the faceplate of his helmet to retract, then
held out his hands.  “I am Watcher,” he said to the people he knew were the
enemies of the Nation of Humanity.  “And I believe we can be of mutual benefit
to each other.”

Chapter Eighteen

Never forget that no military leader has ever
become great without audacity.   Karl Von Clausewitz

Pandora gritted her
teeth as she crawled along the air duct.  Her flesh was rubbing raw against the
metal of the tube, and even with the nanites blocking most of her pain
receptors her already damaged flesh was causing problems.  The bodysuit that
should have cushioned her flesh a little was too torn to prevent her skin from
contacting the floor of the duct.  She stopped for a moment and rolled over to
take stock of her body.  There was some fluid oozing from the ruins of her
breasts, and the burn scars on her belly and thighs were a horror to behold. 
Pandora shuddered as she looked at the damage that had been done to her
beautiful body.  She knew it could be repaired, that it would be if she could
make it back to Watcher and the med labs of the station.  But it still
horrified her on a deep psychological level.

I’m gonna get them
fuckers
,
she thought of the Nation people who had captured her, the Admiral who had
ordered her torture, and of the Nation of Humanity in general.  She rolled back
over and started forward again on her hands and knees, following the schematic
in her head.

At least it has
artificial gravity
,
she thought, then gave a quick chuckle at that thought.  Back in her old life,
in the solar system, artificial gravity was considered a fantasy that would
never come.  The only gravity generated by ships was either from thrust or
spin.  Now even ships she considered primitive possessed gravity generators.

She came to another
hatch that was set to block her way.  She sent her stolen code into the local
control circuit and waited.  And waited some more, panic starting to grow
inside her. 
They’ve wiped the code
, she thought, seeing herself trapped
in these air ducts until they came for her. 
And they’re probably looking at
me on sensors right now
, she thought, her skin crawling at the picture in
her mind.

I’ve got to do
something
,
she thought, wondering for a moment what she could do, then deciding that she
was equipped with what she needed for this job.  Her implants contained a
microprocessor probably as powerful as what was used in the shuttles aboard
this ship, and she had some basic codes gathered from the Chief Inquisitor that
she had not used to this point, that would probably not trigger the alarms if
they were used to probe into the main computer.

Pandora probed with her
mind, her implant catching hold of the carrier wave that allowed link
communications throughout the ship, then using a code to enter the stream.  A
quick thought and the code brought her into the ship’s comp system, while
another took her into the security system.  Here was where it got just a little
bit tricky.  A wrong move and she would be locked out, and the system would be
alert for other attempts.  She locked onto a node of the security system, sent
an inquiry, then allowed her implants to analyze the reply.

The implant crunched
the data, then found the backdoor of the relatively, to it, primitive system. 
The software of her implant had been developed with all of the common backdoors
into less advanced systems closed off.  And it knew what those backdoors looked
like, and how to exploit them.  Especially the backdoors of Nation of Humanity
programs, since they had access to so many computers from suits and equipment,
including a damaged shuttle with intact comp systems, after the Nation Marines
had invaded the station.

In a few moments
another signal came back through the ship’s net, letting her know that the
security protocals had been overridden on this section of the air duct system. 
A constant feed had been established that would show her heat signature in this
part of the duct system until a code was sent that said otherwise. 
Great
,
thought Pandora with a smile. 
Now I just need to get out of this space
before they send someone, because if my fake signal is in the same place where
the real me is, I’m not much better off
.

This next part was even
trickier, involving telling the security system to raise a blast door while
enticing it to not alert the other human watchers.  Again she rode the carrier
wave in, using a different code so the system would not notice that the same
user was messing with the same area. 
My granddad used to talk about the
days when they didn’t have everything hooked up to a computer
, she thought
as the algorithm ran. 
At least not everything, yet.  When he was a boy, and
people still used physical locks to secure stuff
.  The door started to rise
to her front, and she prepared to move through.  As soon as it hit the top she
was scooting under it and on her way. 
Computers are great, but there’s
still something to say for a good bolt that I couldn’t have gotten to.  Only
wish I had opted for the quantum entanglement feature about now
.  But
unfortunately she was cut off from the mainframe quantum computer on the
station.  She hadn’t liked the idea of that supercomputer having an
unrestricted channel to her brain. 
Maybe next time I’ll listen to Watcher
when he tells me he thinks it’s a good idea.

Pandora crawled down
one more branch, then was in front of the door that closed her off from where
she wanted to be.  She knew this one was of thicker construction, and was
controlled by a much more robust security system.  She also knew she needed to
get through it if she had a hope of fighting her way free of this ship.  So
there was nothing to it but to do it.  She linked into the system, this time
using a slightly different approach to the back door, using another security
code she had intercepted on the way here.

At first she thought
she had made a mistake as nothing happened for a moment, and she expected to
pick up an alert signal telling of her whereabouts.  She then breathed out a
sigh of relief as the door started to slide open.  She waited for it to reach
the ceiling, but it stopped three quarters of the way up.  An alarm did sound
through the carrier wave, and the door started back down.  Pandora moved in an
instant, realizing the danger if she got caught by a descending door, and the
greater danger if she didn’t get through.  She jumped forward, feeling the door
fall onto her rear.  She grimaced, grabbed a pull bar in the duct, and jerked
herself through even as her belly hit the floor.  She pulled her legs in tight
and yelped as the door slammed down to take two toes off of her left foot. 
Klaxons started going off, and she knew that people she didn’t want to deal
with would soon be here.

“Crap,” she said under
her breath, reaching down to grab the injured area and thanking the God of her
father that it hadn’t taken both legs, or possibly cut her in half.  The
bleeding was already slowing to a stop under the attention of the nanites, and
the pain block was again going into effect. 
I got to move
, she thought,
turning her body, then kicking the grill out of the vent leading into what she
hoped was the room she needed.

She followed the grill
into the room, knowing that if there was someone there she needed to move
fast.  Pandi landed lightly, most of her weight on her right foot, a stab of
pain shooting up her left leg from her injured member hitting the floor.  She
stifled a yelp, then held back a shout of triumph as she saw what she was
looking for leaning against a wall.  She scanned the room quickly, making sure
there was no one there to interfere, then limped over to the combat armor, probing
with her implant and establishing a link with the on-board computer.

The suit still looked
battered, the outer skin scuffed in many places, a dent here and there.  But
nowhere near as damaged as it had been.  She read through the link that all
internal damage had been repaired, and a weakened but still functional grabber
unit was now operating on the leg the original mechanism had been blown off
of.  The computer gave her a short historical report as she backed into the
armor and felt the physical connections made when the neck section plugged into
her interface.

The Nation tech had
indeed given the suit a good dose of EMP from the inside, where there wasn’t
the protection given by the outer skin, destroying the working nanites.  They
hadn’t wanted the suit to repair itself, something within its capabilities that
they seemed to be well aware of.  They had dosed it again once they got it
aboard, then stored it here in this armory to make sure it was secure.  The
main systems of the suit were of course protected from any level of EMP, and so
were the compartments where the spare nanites were stored.  As soon as activity
around the suit ceased it had released the nanites and put them to work,
repairing the knocked out nanobots and making sure all internal systems were
good to go.  External skin was mostly ignored, except where major damage
affected the functioning of the armor, and of course the grabber needed for
levitation.

Pandora smiled as that
report flashed in her mind, and sent an order to complete skin repairs with
dispatch.  The suit closed around her, seams becoming solid armor as the alloys
sealed at the molecular level.  The suit powered up, and Pandora was happy to
see that she still had a half charge.  She looked over at a power plug and
extruded a probe from her left gauntlet, then slammed the extrusion into the
outlet.  The suit began to suck power from the conduit, and Pandora watched on
her HUD as the suit storage meter began to rise until it was almost fully
charged.

The woman was feeling
good about her chances now.  In the armor she was almost invulnerable to the
weapons of the Nation’s personnel.  She didn’t think they would use
hyper-velocity missiles aboard the ship, or heavy beam weapons.  Looking over
at the racks of weapons she saw both, and felt under no constraint using them
to perforate the walls of the vessel.  In fact, she thought she would feel
really good breaking things and putting holes where they were not wanted.

“Stop right there,”
called out a voice, at the same time that Pandora’s armor told her the door was
opening behind her.

Shit
, she thought, hoping
that she could get the last little bit of power into the crystalline matrix
capacitors, realizing that she had gotten as much as she was going to get.  She
raised her electromag shields and armed her built in lasers, looking on her HUD
as the four Marines all moved into position and pointed their mag rifles at
her.  She smiled as she noted that they only wore the light shipboard armor
meant to protect from hand to hand or blade weapons, and which also provided
some ballistic protection.  But no protection from what she was about to do.

Pandora pulled the
probe from the power plug and turned quickly, extending her other gauntlet out
and triggering the laser as she completed the turn.  Shots hit her suit, mostly
the rapid clatter of automatic fire that lacked any kind of penetrating power. 
The one rifle firing high velocity single shots did not do any better, slowed
some by the electromag field, then bouncing away from the hard armor.  Pandi
swung her fist across the men, the laser burning through them like an infinite
sword blade.  Men scream as they were cut in two just above the waist, smoke
and a searing meat sound accompanying the shouts of agony.  The upper sections
fell away, the men still alive for the moment, their veins and arteries
cauterized shut.  The legs stood for a moment, then fell at all angles.

Pandora grimaced at the
cries the dying men were emitting.  She wanted them dead, all of them.  But
their cries of agony were too much, and she walked over and shot each of them
in the head in turn, silencing the screams that were tugging at her heart. 
They’re
bastards
, she thought as she sent a pencil thin beam into the forehead of
the last man, one who looked up at her with entreating eyes. 
But even
bastards don’t need to suffer like that.  Unless they’re some of them
Inquisitor fuckers, or that Admiral
.  She thought of inflicting such pain
on them and gave a sharkish smile.  Then she cleared her head of such thoughts
and perused the racks of weapons, selecting what she wanted.

The armored warrior
looked up at the grill and shook her head.  The armor would not fit through
those narrow tunnels, which left the corridors of the ship.  And they would
fight her every step of the way, unless she found a path that wasn’t so heavily
guarded.  She jacked into the ship’s information system through her suit and
smiled as an idea came to her.  It seemed like a good one to her, though she
was sure the enemy wouldn’t be quite so enthused.

*     *     *

“She’s broken into an
armory,” called out the Security Chief over the circuit.  “She killed some
Marines and took off from there.”

“Are you able to track
her,” growled the Admiral, slamming a fist on the arm of his chair.

“No sir,” said the distressed
Security Chief.  “She’s disappeared from our scans.”

“What was in that
armory?” asked the Admiral in a quiet voice, feeling misgivings raised by the
inability to track the woman in their own ship.

“Shit,” said the
Security Chief after a moment’s hesitation.  “It was the armory where we were
storing her suit.  And the suit is missing.”