To Well And Back (The Deep Dark Well) (28 page)

“I am Commander
Kallistara,” said the woman, glancing around at her ragged command.  “XO of the
Callista
.  Or I guess I should say the former XO, since
Callista
no
longer exists.  And who might I be talking to?”

“I am Watcher,” said
the armored warrior, smiling at the looks of surprise and mumbled words.

“And you have come to
rescue us?” said the senior officer in a surprised voice.

“I came to rescue
Pandora Latham, who I believe you people are familiar with,” said Watcher,
taking a second to monitor Pandi and frowning. 
That woman is determined to
get herself killed.

“So she lived,” said
the woman, relief in her voice, while the murmuring of the people behind her
increased   “She saved our lives, or the fanatics would have wiped us out
without a fight.  But we were afraid that she was killed when her ship
exploded.”

“She got off,” said
Watcher, again monitoring Pandora and seeing that she had gotten herself out of
the room and into another storage area.  But they would find her soon.  “We
need to move, now.  If you are willing to help, I will try to get you off the
station.”

“And if we aren’t
willing to help?” yelled out a young man from the group who was cradling an arm
that looked to be broken.

“I will still get you
out of here, or at least make a try,” said Watcher, looking the man in the eyes
until the Spacer turned away.  “I won’t be able to leave security here for you,
and it will take longer, but if there is a way to get you off this ship, and
back to your homes, I will find it.” 
I have so much to atone for
,
thought Watcher, looking at the frightened faces before him, and seeing
determination come over most of them. 
I can at least do this much for
allies.

“What say you?” said
the young Commander, looking back at her crew.

The yells were
overwhelmingly to the positive, with only a few naysayers.

“I guess that means we
are your people, Watcher,” said the Commander, giving him a gap toothed smile.

“Then gather up what
weapons there are.  Arm yourselves.  Then we will strike for the armory over in
the next section.”

“And then?” asked the
officer with a grin.

“And then we take this
ship.  And we rejoin your companions on the surface, who I am sure are doing
what they can to help us.”

The Suryans started to
move, gathering weapons and making sure those best able to use them had them.

It was a short fight to
get to the armory, with Watcher and his robots providing the point of the
assault force, the Suryans securing the flanks.  Soon the Suryans were being
equipped with Marine combat equipment, sans the armored suits which had to be
fitted to the individual.  Still, they had naval personnel helmets and body
armor, and Watcher led a much improved force away from the Armory.  He was
starting to feel good about his chances of taking the ship when they ran into
the first line of Marines.

*     *     *

“The damned woman has
broken free again,” called the voice of the Security Chief over the com.

“And how in the Hells
did that happen?” asked Admiral Gerasi, sitting up in his command chair on the
bridge and putting his face in his hands. 
That woman will be the death of
me yet
.

“She had some tricks on
her suit that caught us unawares,” said the Chief of Security.  “She was able
to use the laser units on her forearms to cut herself free.”

“Casualties?” asked
Gerasi in a tired voice.

“Three spacers,
including the officer in charge, and three Marines.”

“And where is she now?”

“We don’t know, sir,”
said the Security Chief in a low voice.  “She disappeared once she got out of
the compartment.”

“Of course you don’t
know,” said Gerasi, straining to keep his voice calm.  “And how did she get out
of the compartment?  You had men outside of it, did you not?”

“We had sent all the
men we had to the stern amidships, to take care of the Abomination,” said the
man, a cringe in his voice.  “We did not expect her to be able to escape.”

“Detail as many men as
you can to find her,” said Gerasi, enunciating each word while he tried to stay
calm.

“All of the Marines are
engaged, or soon to be engaged, with the Abomination and the Suryans he freed.”

Gerasi closed his eyes
and grimaced at that.  With one move Watcher had doubled his strength.  “Then
arm spacers to search for her, and maybe a platoon of the reinforcements.  The
rest of the Marines will be detailed to take the Abomination.”

“And what do we do if
we capture her?” said the Security Chief.

“You don’t capture her,
you dolt,” growled the Admiral over the link.  “You kill her.  You make sure
her body is turned to ash and vapor, after you make sure that it actually is
her.  Maybe save a finger for genetic testing.  But I want her dead, even if
you have to destroy half the ship to get her.”

“Are you sure about
that last, Admiral?”

“I am fucking sure, you
dumb ass,” he yelled.  “And the Abomination too.  Because if we don’t kill them
they will take this ship away from us, and it won’t matter what condition it is
in.  Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” said the
Chief in a cowed tone.  “I’ll get right on it.  May God be with us.”

“May God be with us,”
repeated the Admiral in the statement of faith of his church. 
Though he
doesn’t seem to be doing too well by us so far
.  The Admiral shook his head
and dismissed that blasphemous thought.  God did as God did, and it was not for
man to question him.  It was only for men to strive to accomplish God’s will,
and stand up to whatever tests were placed on his shoulders. 
But why did I
have to be tested with these two?
he thought, shaking his head while the
rest of the bridge crew kept glancing at him, wondering if he was in his right
mind.

*     *     *

“I’m getting damned
tired of this,” growled Colonel Wilhelm Johanson, looking up at the map of the
Galaxy that floated in the center of the huge chamber.  “Why the hell can’t we
get this thing to accept the signal?  I would have thought that something would
have to get through if we sent it continuous.”

“I just wish we could
find a control center for the computer,” said Commander Hanson, his fingers
flying on the virtual keyboard attached to the computer plugged into the
console.

“I guess we could look
around some more,” said the Colonel, turning a baleful gaze onto the console. 
“But we don’t even know what we’re looking for.  Would it be an impressive room
with a lot of chairs and consoles, or simply a room with one chair and a holo
projector?”

“Or a room like this?”
said the Commander, sitting up straight in his chair.  “Computer.  Is this one
of the control rooms?”

“Do you really think it
will answer that question?” asked the scowling Colonel.

“I think it can beat
around the bush a bit,” said the Commander with a shrug of his shoulders.  “But
I believe it has to be truthful with the answer to a direct question, if it is
allowed to answer at all.  So again, computer, is this one of the control rooms
for you?”

“It is indeed,
Commander,” said the toneless voice that still seemed to be laden with regret. 
“From this room all of my central functions can be accessed.”

“At this console?”

“No, Commander.  This
is not the console to directly access my functions.  It is on the other side of
the room.”

“Show it to me,” said
the Colonel, a smile creeping across his face.  “Show it to me, you blasted
machine, and right now.”

The Colonel looked over
at the Commander with a smile of triumph. 
We got you, you son of a bitch. 
And once we get you we have this whole damned place.

Chapter Twenty-Five

It always amazed me how soon the miraculous
seemed to become the normal.  When I first came to the future everything was an
eye opener.  Now I take it as matter of fact.  I guess we’re not so advanced
from the monkeys we came from, able to adjust to just about anything.  Or else
the God my daddy believed in was not very good at making us better than the
beasts.   Pandora Latham.

Pandora crept down the
corridor, her suit not making a sound as she floated ten centimeters above the
floor, the stealth field blending her in with her surroundings.  There were
some damaged areas on the skin of the suit that weren’t functioning properly,
but as long as she kept in the shadows she didn’t think that would be much of a
problem.  And having partial control of the lighting systems made sure there
were shadows to use.

Her audio sensors
picked up a sound from ahead, from where the corridor intersected with another,
and Pandi shifted her suit orientation and floated up to the ceiling, between
the crossbeams that strengthened the corridor.  She faced down and locked her
suit into position, using the soles of her feet and her fingertips to bond to
the metal surface.  And then she waited, pretty sure that she would be
invisible to whoever would look that way, still tensing up and getting ready to
move into the attack if she was spotted. 

Don’t know how much
more excitement I can take
, she thought as her audio pickups followed the sound of
boot heels striking the surface of the floor.  There were four of them passing
her way, and soon she could see them advancing along the corridor.  All were
dressed as spacers, with body armor strapped to their chests, shoulders and
thighs, as well as helmets on their heads.  They all were carrying mag rifles,
one with a grenade launcher, and had bandoliers of ammo strapped over their
body armor.  Pandora breathed a sigh of relief that they weren’t Marines, whose
visual and audio systems might have picked her up despite her stealth.

The men stepped below,
then the one in charge raised a fist in the air and they all stopped, directly
beneath her. 
Crap
, thought Pandora as the sweat ran off her face to
strike her faceplate.  The ever present suit nanos attacked the drops of
moisture and whisked them away, but the woman still had the irrational notion
that some sweat would get through and fall onto the men below.

“What you stopping for,
Chief?” asked the man with the grenade launcher.

“I thought I heard
something,” said the man, looking around.  He glanced up a second and Pandora
felt her heart in her throat.  She stayed motionless, her suit locked so she
couldn’t make an inadvertent move.  The man’s eyes only moved in her direction
for a moment, then slid back to the front.  “Wonder why there are so many
shadows in the corridors,” said the Chief, glancing up the corridor.  “What’s
wrong with the lighting system?”

“Hell, Chief,” said one
of the men, his own eyes darting around the corridor ahead and behind.  “As
shot up as this ship is, I’m surprised anything is working.”

“Must be my nerves,
dealing with these damned heretics,” said the Chief, shaking his head.

“And heretics with
superior tech,” said another man, his own eyes darting here and there.  “Ain’t
that a bitch.  Makes me wonder whose side God is on sometimes.”

“Watch your blasphemous
mouth, Connors,” growled the leader, glaring at the speaker.  “Or do you want
to make the acquaintance of an Inquisitor?”

“Kind of hard, that,”
said the grenadier.  “She went and killed all the Inquisitors on this ship,
deader than shit.”

“The Hell with it,”
said the leader, raising a hand in the air that was only an eighth meter from
touching the invisible woman.  “Let’s move out, so we can get this over with.”

“I just hope it’s
someone else who makes first contact with her,” said the grenadier, shaking his
head.  “Whoever finds her first,” he continued, shaking his head again.  “Well,
I hope they get to heaven quickly.”

“Let’s go,” growled the
leader, stepping off down the corridor, the others following at his back.

Pandora let out her
breath in a sigh of relief.  She waited until the men were thirty meters down
the corridor before she unbonded from the ceiling and dropped down, floating on
her grabbers.  She looked over the schematic of the ship in her mind and found
the route she wanted.  It might take her some time to get to where she was going,
but she thought she could get there.  First she had to get into the starboard
amidships missile room, and then navigate up the warhead feeds to one of the
sternward missile rooms.  Then it would be a short run to where Watcher was,
and they could get off this damned ship.

*     *     *

This is really not
going as planned
,
thought Watcher as he snapped off a particle beam at the enemy position, and
saw it splash from the strong electromagnetic shield those worthy’s had erected
before them.  A particle beam came back in return, and ninety percent splashed
from Watcher’s electromag field.  The ten percent that got through caused some
scarring to his armor, and the superconducting cooling system went into
overdrive to shunt the heat away before it got to his flesh.

Watcher changed the
beam with a thought, setting it for neutrons, which might make it through the
field.  He leaned around the corner with his weapon and fired a snap shot at
the enemy particle beam, then cursed again as it splashed off the screen.  He
ducked back just before the enemy put a beam through the position he had just
occupied, the angry red line eating into the wall of the corridor. 
The
field is too thick,
he thought.  His neutron beam had picked up a charge as
it flew through the positively charged field, slowing down and deflecting away
as it penetrated inward.  What got through hit a physical barricade of hard
metal, and the point of impact glowing for just a moment.  That spot showed
white for a second, then went through red and cool black so fast that he knew
there was superconducting heat sink system built into the metal.

He thought about using
negative matter for a moment, then dismissed the idea.  It would just be
deflected and come back his way, and there was no telling how much would hit
friendlies. 
And we’ve never worked with neutrally charged negative matter
,
he thought,
since such would be uncontainable by any kind of containment
field.

I should have moved
faster, and not waited for the Suryans to get armed and ready
, was his next thought,
as he watched a trio of particle beams intersect one of his battlebots and
leave its head a mass of glowing, melting metal.  The robot of course had its
processors in the better protected chest region, but the hit had still taken
out most of its sensory nodes.

No, I had to wait, and
let the fanatics establish themselves in redoubts behind strong electromag
screens
. 
Watcher was a student of military history, and he knew the saying that no plan
survived contact with the enemy.  He thought the saying needed revision now, to
no plan could help but devolve into total chaos on contact with the enemy.  If
he had moved faster, or even ignored the brig and its captives altogether, he
would already be past this block.  Instead he was fighting a fortified enemy in
that enemy’s territory, which he knew much better than Watcher.  And like
Stalingrad in the past, his superior tech and abilities were being neutralized
in a battle of attrition he could not win.

“I am truly sorry,
Pandora,” he said under his breath, looking at the schematic and wondering what
he could do to break the deadlock.  The only recourse he could see was to move
his squad of robots that were still on the hull around the enemy, and attack
them to the rear.  That meant committing his last reserve, something he was not
wont to do, but it seemed the situation would give him no other choice.

[Move out,] he ordered
the robots over the link, watching as they rose up on the hull and started
moving forward to the next airlock, where they could infiltrate into the ship.

Something hit one of
the robots, an invisible beam that left a glowing patch on its shoulder.  This
was followed by more beams, and Watcher looked through the eyes of one of the
bots to see a couple of squads of Nation Marines, firing from a hundred meters
away on the hull.  He didn’t know how they had spotted the stealthed robots,
but they had, and unless he could get the robots to cover, soon, they would be
swatted from the hull.

Too late
, he cried in his
thoughts as the mounted lasers and particle beams on surrounding ships began to
fall on the robots, turning them into glowing scrap at the same time they
blasted a deep hole in the hull of the
Orca
.  He didn’t know how many
casualties the weapons strike from the other ships might have caused to the
flagship, but it had sure as shit destroyed his one reserve.

He checked his HUD
again, noting that the three robots and fifteen Suryans he had sent on a
flanking maneuver were almost to the point where they would make contact with
the enemy, and he followed them closely in between the shots he fired at the
Marines to his front. 
Come on
, he thought, trying to exert his will and
make the maneuver successful.  Then they were gone, and a low rumbling
vibration told of some kind of large explosion nearby. 

Dammit
, thought Watcher,
slamming a hard gauntleted hand down on his armored thigh.  The Nation Marines
had been ready for that maneuver, and had caught them in a booby trap, an
explosive device that had taken them out without the possibility of a reply. 
The robots were irreplaceable at this time, but were still only machines.  The
Suryans were not replaceable at any time.  And Watcher held back the tears that
wanted to follow the thought that his commands had caused their deaths.  He pushed
that thought away.  He didn’t have time for it, and mourning could come later. 

He aimed his particle
beam cannon and fired away, a series of one second shots that eroded the energy
of the field and struck a Nation Marine in the faceplate as he looked over the
physical barricade to fire.  The man fell back with a smoking hole burned
through his helmet, and Watcher allowed himself a smile of satisfaction. 
One
more down
,
the rest to go
, he thought, pulling his armored body
around the corner and resting for a moment, before planning his next move.

*     *     *

“That should do it,”
said Commander Hanson, pushing the commit button.  “The signal should now be
going to the central processor.”

“About time,” growled
Colonel Johanson, still glaring at the console as if it contained the offending
AI.  “Computer.  This is Colonel Wilhelm Johanson of the Nation of Humanity
Marines.  Do you acknowledge the reception of the code transmission from
Pandora Latham?”

“I acknowledge the
transmission of the code from Pandora Latham,” said the computer in its calm
voice.  “What can I do for you, Colonel Johanson?”

“You can turn over
control of this station to myself, in my capacity of an officer of the Nation
of Humanity Marines,” said the Colonel.

“I am afraid I cannot
do that, Colonel Johanson,” said the computer in a voice tone that almost
sounded like a smirk.

“What do you mean,
cannot do that?” growled the Colonel, his hand falling to his sidearm.  “Do you
acknowledge that the code was correct, and that it was sent by Pandora Latham?”

“I acknowledge both of
those as factual statements,” said the computer.

“And protocol is to
turn the station command to the person in the control center when you receive
such a code transmission?”

“That is also correct,
Colonel Johanson.”

“Then what’s the
fucking problem?” said the Colonel, slapping his pistol butt in frustration.

“Pandora Latham was
under duress when she transmitted that code,” said the computer.  “And being
under duress, she is determined to not be acting of her own free will. 
Therefore, the code transmission is not accepted as an order from Pandora
Latham.”

“What the fuck,” yelled
the Colonel.  “I’ll take you apart, you damned machine.”

“This control room is
vital to the functioning of the station,” said the computer, its voice going
flat.  “You are warned not to attempt to destroy this control room, as I will
be forced to defend myself.”

“Calm down a minute,
Colonel,” said the Commander, putting a hand on the senior officer’s right
arm.  “Computer, how would we convince you that Pandora Latham was in
possession of all her faculties, and willingly transmitted this code?”

“That could be
accomplished by bringing Pandora Latham to the station, and allowing me to
communicate with her,” said the computer in a tone that let them know it didn’t
believe that would be happening.

“No other way?” asked
the Commander.

“No, Commander Hanson,”
said the computer.  “No other way.”

“Then I’ll reduce you
to scrap,” yelled the Colonel, jerking his laser pistol from its holster.  “In
the name of the one true God, I will destroy this place.”