To Well And Back (The Deep Dark Well) (24 page)

“It will have to,”
agreed Watcher, linking into his surveillance net and watching the take from
his sats and bots.  “It will have to.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Success is the child of audacity.   Benjamin
Disraeli

Time to get to work
, thought Pandora as
she came awake, fully alert.  She had always been a hard sleeper, groggy and
confused when she awoke.  She much preferred her new nervous system, which
allowed her to go into a deep sleep, waking to total awareness whenever her
senses registered something that shouldn’t be there, or to her internal alarm.

The woman checked her
surroundings on her HUD and was satisfied that no one knew she was there. 
As
far as they’re concerned I’m playing a harp among the clouds with the angels
,
she thought, then laughed. 
Or more likely in the worst of their Hells,
which would be preferable to spending time with that asshole of a God they
worship.

Pandora moved her suit
away from the ship, gaining some distance.  A hyper-velocity missile still
needed space to accelerate up to the velocity she wanted.  Firing from ten
meters or even a hundred would not have accomplished her task.  Firing from ten
kilometers would, as long as she was on target.  And with the targeting systems
in her suit she was sure she would be.

The woman from the past
pulled the first trigger of the launcher while she painted the target with a
laser from her suit.  Her HUD zoomed in on the laser spot while a beep sounded
in her helmet, indicating target lock.  Pandi pulled the second trigger and the
missile popped into space, then accelerated forward on its grabber units at a
thousand gravities.

The missile hit the
hatch traveling over ten thousand meters a second.  The hull metal of the door
was tough, but the head of the missile was even tougher.  The missile tore a
hole in the hatch, and the heat from penetration tore more of the hatch away,
blasting a meter wide gap in the outer airlock.

Pandora dropped the
first launcher, allowing it to drift away in space, then pulled the second and
last one to her shoulder.  She quickly sighted in, then launched the second
missile, which went through the opening to strike the inner airlock hatch.  In
an instant vapor was jetting from the hole, and Pandora knew that she had
created the diversion she wanted.

Wasting no time she
accelerated back toward the ship and around the hull, then moved up to the bow
from where she fired.  She deceled to a stop in front of another airlock hatch
and reached out to link with the ship’s comp system, sending a new set of
override codes and unlocking the outer hatch.  Next she sent an override of the
sensor system that would tell anyone when the hatch opened.  She counted down a
minute, hoping it was enough to get everyone out of this area and to where she
wanted them.  When the counter hit zero she sent the open code to the lock. 
The outer hatch slid open and she cruised in, closing it behind her and opening
the inner hatch.

Before her was a ready
room much like many others she had seen in her career.  Lockers and spacesuits
in cubbies sat against two of the walls, while doors to other chambers were set
in the bulkheads.  The room was empty, as she intended it to be, though that
could change at any moment if the enemy needed men on the hull to help repair
the breech.  She had thought they would use the hatches on the other side of
the hull though, and so far she had proven correct.

Klaxons sounded in the
background, and she smiled to think of all those poor fanatics roused from a
deep sleep to deal with an emergency situation.  Unlike her, they would not
have brain augmentation that turned on their minds like a light switch, and
many would be disoriented for tens of minutes or more.

The door at the far end
of the ready room opened and a man walked in, looking confused for the moment
as he saw her standing there in her battle armor.  That confusion would be the
last thing he ever felt.  Pandi reacted without thought, raising her arm to
point at him.  She burned through the front of his skull with the suit laser,
vaporizing his brain.  The overpressure blew his skull apart, and his body fell
to the floor before he could give warning.

They’ll still notice
that his life signs fell off the ship net
, she thought, stepping over the body,
wondering how she had ever gotten this cold blooded, where she could kill a
human being and not even think of the life she had taken.  She was not a
psychopath, of that she was sure.  She could cry over the death of a child or
animal on a backward world like Sapphire V.  Or she could take the life of
someone she saw as an enemy who was in her way without batting an eye. 
Hard
times
, she thought, looking up and down the empty corridor. 
I’ll just
have to deal with the nightmares later.  If there is a later. 
She pushed
those thoughts aside and started up the corridor.  It was time for action, not
thought, and she could sit and shiver and regret all she wanted when she got
back home.

The corridor was clear
the rest of the way.  Pandora kept linking to the system through a variety of
codes and protocols so it wouldn’t key on any one operator spoofing the
security, and kept taking cameras and sensors off line until she passed.  She
came to an access tube and hacked the door system, then rose through the duct
until she had moved two decks up.  She sent a few pizzos into the corridor
through a vent and looked up and down the passageway, concentrating mostly on
her target, thirty meters up the hallway. 
That might be a problem
, she
thought, scanning the two battle armored Marine guards standing in front of the
door she needed to get through.

Pandora came bursting
from the opening like a superhero from the cartoons she had watched as a child
despite her father’s admonitions.  She twisted in the air and aimed toward the
Marines, who were frantically trying to pull their rifles to their shoulders. 
The woman from the past fired both forearm lasers at the same time, one to the
helmet of each marine.  One screamed as the beam ate through his visor, then fell
to the floor as control of his suit was removed with his life.  The other
brought his rifle into the path of the beam.  The weapon fell apart in his
hands, burned through the center.

Willing a smart rocket
to lock on Pandora fired the weapon from her shoulder launcher.  The tiny
rocket sped toward the Marine, catching him in the chest and blowing its shape
charge propelled penetrator through the armor.  The Marine fell back, screaming
his working lung out, and Pandi gave him a mercy shot through his helmet with
her laser.

She hit the door switch
at the same time as she sent an override code through the locking mechanism. 
The klaxons were sounding a different note and lights were flashing in the
corridor, and the woman realized she did not have much time to do what needed
doing.  The door slid open and she was looking onto the bridge of the ship. 
The shocked crew looked around at the door and started to go for their
sidearms.

Pandora didn’t have
time to talk, no time to negotiate a surrender with people who might want to
give up.  There were bound to be some who wouldn’t surrender no matter what,
sure that their hateful God would want them to kill the infidel.  They might
even pretend to surrender to get a shot in when she didn’t expect it.  She
didn’t like the idea of killing all these people, who only had their uniforms
and mag pistols for protection.  None of them were equipped for ground or in
ship combat, after all.  They were in the wrong place, at the wrong time,
impeding the wrong person.  But as none were wearing battle armor there was
another way.  All of this went through the woman’s mind as she slipped into a
trance state which speeded her responses and made the world slow down around
her.

Her suit prioritized
the targets as she moved her arms into position, taking into account proximity,
speed of reactions, and type of weapons.  All had the same type, and none were
much of a threat, so the red pips first highlighted those on the far periphery
of her view.  She moved fast, hoping she could get them all before someone
thought to send a lockdown code to the system.

Pandi swept her arms
inward, the sonic stunners in her suit playing over the outside figures and
moving in.  They were projecting at full power, enough to knock any normal
person out for a half hour.  The two crew members on the edge crumpled while
their eyes rolled up in their heads, followed by the next two, until Pandi had
knocked all of the bridge crew to the floor.  She walked forward, playing the
beams over each of the recumbent figures, increasing their out time.  That
done, she turned back to the door and played for a moment with the locking
system and shut it closed tight, then spot welded the hatch to the frame along
its length.

Pandora raised her
helmet, and in a moment wished that she didn’t.  The bridge smelled of bowels
that had loosened when the stunner took all conscious control of skeletal
muscles from the targets.  She sniffed, decided she would get used to it, and
got to work, moving a crewman out of his seat before the tactical board and
linking in, making the control system hers.  Then she started looking for more
targets, calculating the possibilities in her mind.  A flash of something on
the screen caught her eye, and she zoomed the viewer on the planet to see that
someone was firing on someone else down there.  She zoomed in further, and her
heart caught in her throat as she saw the big man shaped war machine move
swiftly across the screen from cover to cover.

What in the Hell is the
big lug up to?
she thought, hesitating for a moment. 
He has to be coming for me, but he
doesn’t know where I am.  He might have guessed, but he can’t possibly know. 
There
were other figures moving with him, what had to be Suryans.  As she watched in
horror one of the figures was vaporized in a cloud of steam and ash, then
another, and she realized that a ship was firing down on them. 
Well,
there’s something I can do about that
, she thought, working the board. 
But
first things first, or the whole thing will be for nothing.
 

She targeted the
missiles first, while she still had control of those in the tubes, and before
the men in the missile rooms overrode her controls.  She punched in the
controls and released, then went to the beam weapons and fired at the primary
targets, then locked on to the secondaries.

*     *     *

Gerasi thought he felt
vibrations through his bed just before the alarm sounded. 
What in the Hells
is going on
? he thought, sitting up in his bed and forcing as much
wakefulness as possible into his brain.  He was a fleet commander in a combat
situation, so there was always a chance that something would happen, a
possibility he had to be ready for.  But he was also on the edge of exhaustion,
and a quick check of his internal clock showed that he had only gotten an
hour’s sleep before whatever was happening had happened.

“What’s going on?” he
called on his com link to the bridge.

“Something hit the port
amidships Alpha Four emergency airlock,” came back the voice of the Tactical
Officer.  “They…”

The bed shook once
again, not hard, just enough to show that something had hit the massive
vessel.  “We have a blowout on airlock Alpha Four,” called another voice over
the link.

“This is the Admiral
speaking,” said Gerasi, getting out of bed and reaching into the closet for an
overall.  “What’s the situation down there?”

“Something blasted
through the outer hatch of airlock Alpha Four.  Bulkheads have sealed off the
breach.”

“Casualties?”

“We had three people in
the area who are not reporting in,” said the voice from damage control.  “No
life sign readings, presumed lost.”

“Crap,” said Gerasi,
trying to think of what might have hit a single airlock. 
A meteor.  No,
because there was a couple second time gap between the first hatch going and
the second.  So it was some kind of weapon.  But what would only damage one
airlock, and not attack the ship in general.

“Any reports from the
rest of the fleet about attacks?”

“No, sir,” came back
the voice of the com tech.  “Nothing.”

Gerasi finished zipping
up his jumpsuit and pulled on his boots, sealing them, then headed toward the
cabin door.  “I’ll be at the airlock in two.  I want to know what happened by
the time I get there.” 
It couldn’t have been that Latham woman, could it?
he thought, jogging for the lift. 
Could it?  She was blown out of space. 
Or was she?

He was left to his
thoughts as he rode the lift to the level where the airlock in question was
located.  Then it was a short jog down the corridor, to a crossway, then to the
outer passageway.

“We have a situation at
airlock Beta Six,” came the call from the Security Chief.

“What kind of damned
situation?” asked the Admiral, stopping in front of a bulkhead that was sealing
off the breached area.  Unfortunately, this lock was an emergency hatch, and
didn’t have an attached ready room, so the breach evacuated the entire
corridor.  The damage control people were having to use the emergency bulkheads
as a lock so they could get people in to seal the damaged airlock.  That and
people approaching from outside.