The Deep Dark Well (30 page)

And even three thousand
warriors could be swallowed up by that huge artifact on the main holo.  It was
just too big, too massive.  But if they could hold just this small area long
enough to get something worthwhile out, the inevitable losses would be worth
it.

“Have they met any
resistance yet?” asked the admiral through the secure link.

“No sir.  And that has
me worried.  They’ve entered as planned through the fourteen chosen access
ports.  And nothing has raised its head, yet.”

“I don’t like it
either,” said the admiral.  “You have total control of the reaction force. 
It’s yours to deploy.”

Great
, thought Mathis. 
Another
five hundred spacemen, ready to go in and save the asses of the marines
. 
He was afraid that if it came to that his command would be lost.

“Colonel,” yelled one
of the communications techs from his station.  “First platoon of G Company has
found something.”

The holo to the
colonel’s front switched from the admiral to the camera views of the platoon
leader of the unit in question.  What looked like computer terminals sat in the
small room.  Naval techs were cutting them loose from their desks and cables,
preparing them for transport back to the launches.  A trooper opened a cabinet
on the wall.  What could have been weapons, or tools, were arranged on a
featureless board.  The trooper began to pull them off and toss them to another
naval rating, who bagged the gear in a carrying case.

“K Company has run into
some resistance,” yelled another tech.  The holo switched to another view. 
Senior
Sergeant W. Kimal
read the words below the display.  A hopping creature
appeared in the view, then a couple of more. 
Aliens
, thought the
colonel with a curse.  Hustedeans.  And they had thought the station was
unoccupied except for the one being.  The view rolled for a moment,
disorienting, as the sergeant obviously ducked under the shots of the
Hustedeans.  The creatures rocked back as the high velocity projectiles of the
marine rifles struck them.  A heavy laser licked out, beam a bright purple in
the kicked up dust and smoke of the hall.

Many of the creatures
froze in standing positions, as others fell to the floor.  More took their
places.  Mathis was surprised by the lack of blood.  He knew Hustedeans bled
red, like most other oxygen breathing sentients.  The glint of metal on the
torso of one of the dead in its tracks creatures gave it away.

A red number sprung
into existence on the side of the holo, then a green number beside it. 
Casualties count, two of his men dead, five wounded.  The count slowly grew, as
the firefight expanded to other parts of the station.

The sergeant’s view was
still active, as the man got up from the floor and walked toward one of the
robots.  A naval tech moved into the view, cutting laser out as he started to
sever the head of one of the robots from the body for return to the ship. 
Other robots faced similar treatment.  Before it was over, a dozen of the
machines would be transported back to the squadron.

“P Company has run into
something heavy,” yelled a tech, as the view changed again.  Larger robots,
distinctively mechanical this time, were holding their own in a large chamber. 
Five of them, with an entourage of the Hustedean shaped bots.  With a thought
the holo expanded to a close-up on the robots, and Mathis’ breath caught as he
realized the implication of the machines.  Fractuals.  Robots of legend to his
people, rumored to be the most useful of machines.  Machines taking terrible
damage from the marine company trying to remove them from its path.  Small
blocks shattered by the thousands under the hail of fire.  Explosions danced
around the perimeter of the chamber, as grenadiers plied their weapons,
blasting the smaller robots into incomplete parodies of themselves.

One of the fractuals
blew into very small pieces in the great explosion that signaled the attack of
a rocket launcher.  Mathis swore at the destruction of something his engineer
training made him desire above anything else they had seen so far.  But the
marines had no choice, if they were to win the fight.  Within minutes it was
over.  The marines moved forward to salvage the remains.  Hopefully enough to
build one of the things for themselves.

Firefights erupted here
and there.  The enemy seemed to only have robots to throw into the battle. 
Sophisticated robots to be sure, but still limited.  Casualty figures were
still light, only thirty killed, a hundred wounded.  The men were bagging huge
quantities of equipment, data disks, and materials.  Weapons from the hands of
the robots.  They had yet to find the true prize, an example of one of the
space drives used by the ancients.

“L Company has run into
something big,” said a tech.

Mathis swore as the
view switched to take in a trio of big, ugly looking machines.  The torn apart
body of a marine gave the scene some scale, and the colonel realized these
robots were over twenty feet tall and as heavily armored as tanks.  High
velocity rounds struck sparks as they hit the robots.  That was the only sign
that anything at all was happening to them.  The robots fired back with
rotating barrel cannon, rockets, and the red-hot particle beams they sprayed
around the room.

“Where the hell are the
heavy weapons,” screamed Mathis, as he watched the view switch several times, a
sign that his computer was accessing working camera units as marines carrying
them were killed.  The casualty figures rose alarmingly.  L Company was taking
a beating.

A huge ball of fire
blossomed on the torso of one of the combat robots, as molten metal and pieces
of robot flew from the explosion.  The robot fell backwards, its legs and arms
still moving.  It tried to get back up as a couple of grenades landed near it. 
Explosions rocked the room as the detonations did their work and disabled the
combat robot. 

“Chamber secure,” came
the voice of the only surviving officer of the company, a lieutenant.  Mathis
looked again at the casualty figures.  L Company had lost over half of its
personnel to the trio of heavy robots.  He prayed to the patriarch that there
were not many more of the things.

A shout of a technician
killed his hope, as two other companies were soon under assault by combinations
of robots, including the heavies that had so decimated L Company.

*    *    *

They have guts
, thought Pandi, as she
watched her robots battle the invaders.  The marines would not back down,
taking room after room with swift assaults.  And they had spread far from their
multiple entry points, making her job of coordinating the defense even harder. 
Surely they didn’t expect to conquer the station?  Not even a small portion of
the station, not with the troops they had deployed.  If so they were madmen.

And they fought like
madmen.  Their technology may have not have been as advanced as that carried by
the robots, but it was powerful enough to destroy.  Thousands of robots had
already been destroyed, and Pandi began to feel that her feat in fighting
through them had not been so great after all.  Of course she hadn’t the
advantages of heavy weapons and the flanking fire of comrades.

Break off that attack
, she ordered with a
thought, as the invaders were about to swamp some of her robots. 
Set up in
ambush in the ready room at these coordinates.
 

A thought crossed her
mind at that moment, as she watched several marines gunned down by a heavy
combat robot.  Was she on the right side in this fight?  The station computer
had stated that these men needed to be stopped from taking the station.  Why
did she trust it now when she didn’t trust it before?  Could she take the risk
of not listening to it?

No
, she thought, even as
the guilt of killing washed over her.  Watcher had not wanted these people on
his station.  He thought they shouldn’t have access to the technology they would
find here.  But they were getting away with machinery and equipment.  Probably
enough to boost their own tech base by hundreds of years at least.

Her mind followed the
battle as three-dozen firefights erupted across the station.  Total control was
hers, the dream of all the generals through history.  Her soldiers were
completely obedient, without a qualm of killing or dying for queen and country.

Finally she came to the
conclusion that while she could prevent the invaders from penetrating any
further into the station, she would not be able to dislodge them with the
present wave of robots.  And it would take a while to gather enough forces for
an overwhelming assault.  In the meantime, the intruders were gathering all the
tech they could get their hands on.

*    *    *

“Can’t we fire a spread
of torpedoes at them?” asked Fleet Admiral Nagara Krishnamurta.  A feeling of
frustration, of helplessness washed over him as he watched the images of the
Nation
of Humanity
ships on the holo.  His fleet was on the other side of the
Donut
,
coming in at a bit of an angle, catching glimpses of the
Nation
squadron
for a few seconds every eleven point eight minutes, the time for the structure
to completely rotate.

“I don’t think that
would be wise, sir,” said the tactical officer.  “While we don’t know the total
capabilities of the artifact, we can be sure they are greater than we can
imagine.  I wouldn’t want to have whoever or whatever is controlling that thing
to think we are attacking it.”

“Besides,” said the
captain, “even if we fired we wouldn’t be able to get a hit for several hours. 
They will probably be away by then.”

Damn
, thought the admiral. 
And it was still an hour before they were at rest compared to the
Donut
. 
Even at the thousands of gravities the torpedoes were capable of accelerating,
they still took time to cover a distance.  His people had always resisted the
idea of using the space destroying drive of their enemies.  Their own warp
bubble drives were more efficient in the long run, allowing them to reach
speeds much greater than the space destroying drive allowed.  On trips between
the stars the warp bubble drive gave them a great transit advantage.  The farther
the distance to be traveled, the greater the advantage.  But the space
destroying drive seemed to give the ships of the
Nation
a great
advantage within the gravity well of a system, as well as allowing them to
launch instantaneous transit torpedoes.

Ships with space
destroying drives ran the risk of their negative matter shield rupturing and
destroying the ship, as well as the danger of intersecting material objects in
normal space.  But the
Surya
ships were guaranteed to implode if they
activated their drives this close in to a gravity source.  So their
superior
tech didn’t translate into superior results.

“I think this mission
is a bust, sir,” said the tactical officer.  “As soon as they are finished they
will just warp out of there.  If even half of them survive the transit they
will have succeeded in their mission.”

“And we won’t be able
to catch them in this space,” finished the admiral.  “But we have to be in
position to try.”

“Once they achieve
pseudo light, it doesn’t matter if we overtake them,” continued the tactical
officer.

Because the only way we
would catch them then
,
thought the admiral,
would be to try and intercept them outside of their
home systems
.  Right under the guns of their system fleet.  Odds of
destroying the enemy ships before they reached safety, minimal.  Odds of being
destroyed before getting away, infinite.  Both sides had learned early on the
dangers of assaulting the defended systems of the other.  Which was why they
played the game in other locations, away from the strengths of their opponents.

“At least one of our
ships has to get home,” said the captain.  “They have to learn about the warp
torpedoes the
Nation
is using.”

“They don’t seem to be
very accurate,” said the tactical officer.  “I doubt they would get more than
one significant hit on a planetary target in a hundred launches.”

“But they could
devastate a system if launched in mass,” replied the captain.  “And it might be
worth it just to achieve a terror effect.”

“I agree with you
captain,” said Krishnamurta.  “Order
Prinus
and
Commaga
to go to
maximum deceleration.  I want them to pull out of this system and head for
home.  The rest of us are expendable.”

“Thank you, sir,” said
the captain.  “I feel ready to face anything as long as the home worlds are
warned.  And we also need to warn them about the unexpected.”

“Yes,” agreed the
admiral.  “No telling what they will get from that artifact.  We better be
prepared for the worst.”

*    *    *

“L, J and S companies
are holding,” said Mathis over the holo link.  “The rest are on the way out.”

“I’m impressed,
colonel,” said the admiral .  “Prize reports are coming in from the first
launches.  This will keep the research boys at work for years.”

“I hope they get
something useful from it all,” said the Lt. Colonel.