To Well And Back (The Deep Dark Well) (2 page)

Pandi thrust her blade
through the shield, the super sharp sword made up of advanced materials held in
place by a strong electromagnetic field pushing into the wood and metal  like
it wasn’t there.  It continued through the chain mail and into the body of the
man.  Pandi pulled the sword free with a draw cut, and the lifeless man fell to
the floor.

Two swords quested for
the woman, but she moved much too quickly for either man to target her.  One
swished above her head, while the other pushed forward, missing her as she
stopped in place.  She batted one sword aside and sliced through the other,
then flicked her blade in like a striking rattlesnake.  And then there were
three frightened looking men between her and the King. 
And they’ll die in
place before they let me through
, she thought. 
I really don’t need to
kill all these people, who are just doing as they are ordered
.  She
remembered that there was another way, one she had forgotten in the excitement
of the moment.

With that thought she
pulled a small object off of her belt and aimed the front toward the men.  The
ovoid shape vibrated in her hand, and the men went down, eyes rolling up, then
closing as consciousness left them.

Something hit Pandora
in the back, hard, right between the shoulder blades.  The leather vest she
wore under her dress hardened to the consistency of steel and repelled whatever
it had been, but it still hurt.  She turned with pantherish grace, her sword
coming around, to see an old man with a dagger in his hand.  There was a
shocked expression on his face, and his eyes kept darting from Pandi to the
dagger and back again.  Pandi shook her head, then punched the man in the face,
knocking him down and out with her augmented strength.

Now to get me an
asshole
,
she thought, turning and leaping over the downed men-at-arms, heading through
the passageway beyond.  She looked left, then right, catching a glimpse of the
robes the King was wearing disappear through another entrance.  She ran to the
opening and found a set of stairs going up.  Pandi took the steps two at a
time, leaping into a hall with several thick doors set on each side.  The one
furthest down the hall slammed shut as she watched, and she heard a heavy bolt
slam home.

Got you
, she thought, running
to the door.  She ignored the entreaties of Watcher, her friend and lover
trying to dissuade her from her self-assigned mission.  Pandora Latham was
having none of it.

The stout iron trimmed
wooden door would have stood up to a ram for some time.  The super sharp sword
went through it like it had rotted to the point of collapse.  She pushed down
and felt a bit more resistance as the sword sliced through the iron bolt.  A
swift kick flung the door open, to reveal the trembling King standing in the
center of the room, a long sword in his shaking hand.

“Who are you?” yelled
the King in a tremulous voice.  “From what realm of Hell do you come?”

“Not Hell,” said Pandi,
stalking forward.  “Heaven.  I am the Angel the just God, come to make you pay
for your crimes.”

“That is not true,”
said the other man in the room, wearing the ornate robes of a higher clergy
member.  “You are not from God.  The King was ordained by God, and does his
will.”

Pandi played the
stunner over the man, making sure she did not touch his head with any part of
the beam.  She wanted him awake.

“And now you pay,” she
said to the King, bringing her blade back in a blur.  “And may your soul burn
in Hell for eternity.”

At that last she swung
forward.  The King may have been a formidable warrior in his younger days.  He
was not such now.  And his life was taken swiftly by the blade of the demon
woman.

Pandora Latham walked
over to the Priest and stood above him.  “I am the Angel of the vengeful God. 
A God who cries over the trials of his people.  Make sure that the next to
ascend the throne knows that God is not happy with the way the nobility treats
the people.  Let him know that the vengeful Angel will be back, should they
decide to continue the policies of the dead King.”

With that she turned
away, contacting her robots through the link and planning their egress from the
castle.

[That was evil, Pandora
Latham,] said the voice of Watcher in her mind over the circuit.  [We need to
talk, you and I.]

“And if I don’t want to
talk?” she said aloud.

The blade in her hand
shimmered for a moment, then fell into dust at her feet.  She stared at the
remains of the blade for a moment, and realized that he still controlled the
technology that she was using.  “Ok, lover,” she said in a resigned tone,
knowing that he had made his point.  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Chapter Two

Racism, xenophobia and unfair discrimination
have spawned slavery, when human beings have bought and sold and owned and
branded fellow human beings as if they were so many beasts of burden.   Desmond
Tutu

“Admiral on the bridge,”
called out the voice of the first officer to spot the personage of the fleet
commander.

“At ease,” called out
Admiral Miklas Gerasi, striding toward his chair that overlooked the organized
chaos that was the bridge of the battleship
Orca
.  He stared at the holo
tank, and the system of eight stars displayed thereon. 
I didn’t think I
would be back here so soon
, he thought, his mind going back to his mission
two years past. 
And if I never came back it still would have been too soon
.

But they had needed
someone who knew the system, and Gerasi was the most knowledgeable flag officer
in the fleet as far as the Supersystem was concerned. 
And I don’t even have
Midas to lean on
.  Valaris Midas had been promoted to Commodore, and was
leading a division within the other task force, the one on the way here. 
Gerasi looked with ill-concealed contempt at the Flag Captain they had saddled
him with.

“Captain  Lashan,”
growled the Admiral, plopping down in his chair.  “How long till orbital
insertion?”

The Captain looked down
his long patrician nose at his military superior and social superior.  He
started to say something, seemed to think better of it, then thought for a
moment.  As a nephew of the Patriarch of the Nation of Humanity, the man had
little to fear of any superior.  A superior officer who punished him in any
manner better have a perfect case, if he wanted to survive the Inquisition that
would be called to review the incident.  But Gerasi had already raked this
officer over the coals in front of his crew, and only a stupid man would not
realize they were on a long deployment in which the Admiral’s word was law, and
there was no contact with the Theocracy of the home state.

“We should be in orbit
in about forty-nine hours,” said the officer, his eyes unfocused in the faraway
look of link.  His voice stayed in that haughty tone of better than thou, and
when his eyes focused on the real world again the same look returned to his
face.  “We will return to normal space drive in thirty-eight hours, then
continue into the system on reactionless.  With the Admiral’s permission, of
course.”

Gerasi thought about
the information for a moment, making the Captain wait as well as a benefit. 
With Alcubierre, or the FTL pseudo drive that actually destroyed the space in
front of the ship and recreated it behind, they were still in touch with normal
space in most respects.  They could look out over the Universe to all sides
with the exception of front and rear.  Signals, including light, could not
reach them from the bow, as they were obliterated along with the space they
were in.  And anything coming from the stern could not catch up, as space was
created faster than the light could travel.  And basic doctrine taught that it
was a very bad idea to operate the drive within the confines of a solar
system.  They could destroy space, but material objects were another matter
altogether.  They could wipe out a small asteroid massing much less than the
ship.  But run into a moon or a planet and the story was different.  The
surface of the body might take some damage, a hundred meters or so into the
soil, over a hundred of square kilometers of surface.  But the ship would come
apart at the seams, and spew particular matter of atomic and subatomic material
in all directions.  That would also be bad for the planet, but it would still
exist at the end of the incident, while the ship would not.

He had used the drives
on his fleet the last time he had been in the system, within close proximity to
the
Donut
and the massive black hole it orbited.  It had been a
desperate gamble, and had cost him a quartet of battleships, one into the maw
of the black hole.  But it had been the only way to get in through the defenses
of the station, and get the tech he had come for.  People back home had not been
happy with those losses, but had been ecstatic at the haul.  And someday the
ships of his nation would be equipped with the same advanced drive as used by
the Ancestors.  But this was not yet the day.

“Very well,” said
Gerasi, getting up from his chair and walking to the main hatch to the bridge. 
“Keep me apprised of any changes, and I will be back on the bridge in four
hours for an update.”

Gerasi could feel the
glare of the Captain on his back as he headed off the bridge. 
So we don’t
like each other
, thought the Admiral. 
Well too damned bad.  We just
have to work together.

*     *     *

“You have made great
strides here, Commodore,” said Fleet Admiral Nagara Krishnamurta of the Kingdom
of Surya.  He looked up and down the long corridor of the station, and the
Marine honor guard that stood along the passageway.

“Thank you, Admiral,”
said the slightly pudgy woman who had been put in command of the Kingdom’s
presence in the Supersystem.  “Our friends have been of great service as well.”

Our friends
, thought the Admiral,
shaking his head. 
I still wonder how much of our friends those two really
are.  Or if there are more of them, hidden in the shadows.

He couldn’t complain
too much though.  Their friends had equipped them to be on equal footing with
the Nation of Humanity.  It would have been nice if they had given them
superior tech, but the pair of humans had been unwilling to go that far.

A superman from the
here and now, and a woman from the past
, thought the Admiral, continuing along behind
the Commodore into a large observation room looking down over an orange and
blue planet. 
Saviors or devils?  Even the Council of Ministers can’t decide
.

“And how is the work
planetside going?” he asked Commodore Natasha Sundraka, studying the pattern of
continents and islands on the blue seas.

“With the humans,” she
said with a smile.  “Very well.  At first they thought we were the Gods
returning from the heavens.  It took a bit of teaching to convince them that we
are as human as they.  And a couple of accidental deaths among our people.” 
She frowned at this last, and Krishnamurta could read the pain in her face. 
But she had been chosen as much for her connection to the Church as to the
military, and he was sure that such as she would never get used to losing people.

Like any of us ever do
, he thought,
remembering the casualties he had taken trying to intercept the Nation forces
on the outskirts of their own system.  A desperation move that had proven
unwise.  “And the aliens?” he said, nodding his head toward the planet.

“They, are more of a
problem,” admitted the woman, her lips pursing into a pout.  “We have Maurids
on the planet.  And you’ve never seen such a beastly bunch of aliens.”

“How intelligent are
they?”

“Devilishly
intelligent,” said the Commodore, glaring at the planet.  “At least as smart as
we are.  I don’t see how the Ancestors ever controlled them.  They can move
like lightning, and lay hidden for hours.  And that demon God they worship.  I
almost wish the true Gods would strike them dead during a worship service.”

“Not a very Godly
attitude, Commodore,” admonished the Admiral, waving a finger.  “What would the
Church Elders think of such?  We are here to lead our sophont brothers back to
the fold.  Not kill them.”

“I know admiral,” said
the woman with a sigh, putting her hands behind her back and walking over to
the observation room bar.  “I know.  But these seem the children of the devil.”

“And you have not been
able to save any of these creatures?” asked the Admiral, tapping his foot on
the floor and rubbing his chin with his hand.

“Maybe a few hundred,”
said the Commodore, pouring herself a drink and raising an eyebrow at her
superior.

“I would love one,” he
answered, walking toward the bar, while the rest of his staff moved to the
window to look out at the world their Kingdom had claimed.

“A few hundred,”
repeated the Commodore, pouring some liquor into a glass and handing it to the
Admiral.  “Maybe a thousand who have come to the mission, seeking sanctuary
from another tribe or confederation, or some such organization.  Most eat our
food and shelter under our guns, but only pay lip service to our offer of
salvation.  And of those about two hundred, maybe three, actually have embraced
our Gods.”

“And how are those
worthies behaving?” asked the Admiral, taking a sip and feeling the bite of
good whisky.

“A little different
than most adherents to the faith,” said the woman, looking back toward the
window.  “Oh, they act well enough, but there is something foreign to their
thought patterns.  They’re.  Well, they’re...”

“Alien is the term I
think you’re looking for Commodore,” said the Admiral with a head nod and a
smile.  “They think differently than we do, because they are wired
differently.  For whatever reason the Gods gave them different brains, different
kinds of neurons, even, in some cases, completely different cellular
structure.  Or, if you believe the scientists, they evolved that way in
different environments, though the Gods still had a hand in it.  So they think
differently than us.  Not better or worse, in some cases faster and deeper. 
But different.”

“And that is what we
must learn to deal with?” asked the Commodore with a frown, swallowing another
slug of liquor.

“If we want to spread
the faith across the Galaxy, and perpetuate the kind of civilization that we
want for ourselves and our children, then yes,” said the Admiral, turning and
walking back to the window.  “That is what we must learn to deal with.  Now,”
he said, turning back and walking over to the Commodore.  “What’s been going on
with our deadly enemies, the ones whose motivations we cannot mistake or
misjudge?”

“They have brought
another task force into the Suspersystem,” said the Commodore, her expression
grim.  “Equal in size to yours.”

“Tell me something I
don’t know,” said the Admiral with a grimace.  “And what have they been up to
on that star they have claimed?  While all the fleets were away.”

“Nothing good,” said
the Commodore, shaking her head.  “The kind of stuff that we have grown used to
from the Xenophobe bastards.  But let me show you.”  The Commodore walked
toward another doorway, motioning for the admiral to follow her.

And why do I think I’m
not going to like this
? he thought, walking into the conference room and taking a
seat. 
Because I’m not a complete idiot is why.

*     *     *

“It sure is hot,”
complained one of the staff officers.

It sure is
, thought Admiral
Miklas Gerasi, glaring back at the man who had stated the obvious, and reminded
the senior officer of something he was trying to ignore.  He looked up into the
sky, tinted slightly orange from the light of the local K4 star.  Ks were not
the brightest of stars, but the planet was close in to the inner limit of the
life zone, and at that position any planet was hot.

They had reached the
top of the small hill that had been their target, and Gerasi wondered yet
another time why the base commander had wanted them to walk up here when they
could have seen this just as well from air car or shuttle.  Though he had to
admit that the view was spectacular.

In all directions
stretched jungle of purple tinted green, while in the distance were high
mountains with a permanent white cap on their peaks.  The sky was streaked with
clouds, not enough to cut down on the fury of the too close sun.  And directly
in front was the cleared area of a landing field, and the score or so finished
hangers, barracks and administration buildings of the base.  Tiny figures moved
across the area, humans in battle armor, ready to put down any revolt, and the
aliens that they were supervising.

“The Hustedeans are a
naturally lazy race,” said the base commander, Marine Colonel Joshua Ramirez. 
“Kind of stupid, too.  Only a seven on the sentient scale.”

While humans are a ten
, thought Gerasi,
nodding his head. 
But all races are on a bell curve, which means that some
of these aliens are probably smarter than you are, Ramirez.  Since you are
nowhere near the positive end of our curve.
  “But you have no trouble
getting them to work?”

“They work, or they
don’t eat,” said the Marine with a smile.  “And don’t work long enough and they
eat a bullet.  Even those stupid fuckers can get the point after they see
enough of their fellows thrown into a mass grave.”

“But you still have
enough workers?”

“They are always more
in that damned jungle,” said the Colonel, wiping his own brow of the beading
sweat.  “We just find another village, and bring out the ones that are useful
to us.  The others feed the carrion eaters, of course.”

“Until there are no
more left of them in the area,” said the Admiral, pointedly looking at the Base
Commander.  “Until there are no more of them left on the planet.”