To Well And Back (The Deep Dark Well) (21 page)

“Dammit,” screamed the
Admiral, looking into the frightened face of the Security Chief through the
visual part of the link. 
She seems to be one step ahead of us all the
time.  And our computer safeguards aren’t enough to stop her.
 

He glowered at the
Security Chief for a moment, the words on his lips that would relieve the man
of his duty.  But he wasn’t sure if the next man in line would do any better
against this woman.  She was smart, very smart, and she had resources they had
never begun to suspect.  Like breaking free of her restraints and killing five
inquisitors.  That was unheard of.  Then finding her way to the one room among
a thousand on the ship where her major resource was stored, and activating a
suit they were all sure was disabled.

“Alert all crew to arm,
and to be on the lookout for her,” said the Admiral, staring into the screen. 
“Only try to stop her if they have the firepower to do so.  Otherwise, stay out
of her way, and alert security so the Marines can try to take her. 
Understood?”

“Understood,” said the
Security Chief, wiping his brow with a sleeve, relief on his face as he
realized he would keep his position, for the moment.

The Admiral cut the
circuit and sat back in his chair, rubbing his temples with his fingers to try
and relieve an oncoming headache. 
What the hell can she be up to?
he
thought, trying to get into the mind of the woman. 
Is she trying to
escape?  That would be the smart move, but she has to know that anything she
steals to get to the planet will be seen and shot down.  So what will she try
to do?
  And in a flash it came to him.  She would try to damage or destroy
this ship.  Which would seem a totally mad plan on the outside, unless one knew
the woman and the capabilities of the advanced combat armor she now wore.

“Security Chief,” said
the Admiral, relinking through the circuit.  “I need to talk to you.”

“We’re getting a
message from the surface,” called out the Marine Liaison Officer, looking back
at the Admiral.

“What now?” asked the
Admiral, putting the security chief on hold.

“It’s not good, sir,”
said the Liaison, his face troubled.

Watcher
, thought the Admiral,
putting his face in his hands and readying himself for the bad news.

*     *     *

First had come the
calls from the company holding closed the backdoor in preparation for the main
assault.  The calls had been panicked and confused, and Major Dronning Dumas
was not sure what they meant.  The most rational explanation was that another
force had attacked out of the jungle, and he knew the Abomination had some
assets out there in that horror of a forest.  The Major had not thought them so
close. 
But I guess we should never underestimate his capabilities.

The Major still had
almost a regiment of Marines, and he couldn’t comprehend the small force the
Abomination was said to have actually defeating his command.  It might be a
long and bloody fight, short and bloody more like, but surely the Abomination’s
force would succumb to the numerically superior Nation Marines.

Dumas had ordered his
flank units to consolidate and attack into the sides of the force that had
routed his company.  And had prepared to move on the cavern with a battalion at
the same time.  And then had come the second shock.  A shock that was still
rolling up his lines, when the tanks, robots and armed Suryans came through the
jungle and hit his flank.  All led by that monster of a combat suit that
destroyed everything in its way.

“Get that son of a bitch,”
yelled someone over the com.  There were more screams and yells, the sound of
something exploding, more yells, then silence.

“All men, concentrate
fire on that big combat suit when he comes within sight,” yelled the commander,
watching his heads up display to see where the dot tagged as the Abomination
was centered.  The tanks were still around him, as well as many other dots that
signified robots and Suryans.  As he watched one of the tank dots blinked for a
moment and then faded off the screen.

“We got one of the
vehicles,” came a voice over the link.  A moment later the angry bee sound of a
heavy particle beam drowned out all background noise.  Then silence, and the
Major knew the hyper-v crew had been destroyed.

The cries and screams
and shouted orders continued over the com, and the Major knew the situation was
getting out of hand. 
And we can’t even call in a kinetic strike
, he
thought, glaring at the enemy symbols that were continuing to sweep his
flanks. 
Not with the enemy within our lines
.  He was almost afraid to
give the fleet any more information about the situation.  They might consider
himself and his troops expendable if there was a possibility that they could
take out the Abomination.  He almost wouldn’t blame them.  Almost.  Of course,
when it was his hide, and the lives of his men involved, he would damn them to
hell for dropping a big kinetic on his command.  Even though it might not make
any difference as far as their survival was concerned.

*     *     *

Watcher had been
developed to be the ultimate soldier.  One that was tougher, stronger, and most
important smarter than any possible opponent.  He was also made immortal so
that he might rise to be the ultimate commander, building his knowledge and
wisdom throughout the ages.  He was the only one of his kind, because once
those who were involved in his development discovered just how dangerous he
could be their fear made them hold back on making any others.

So Watcher felt in his
element in battle.  It was exhilarating to him in a way nothing outside of
great sex was.  A rush, putting his life on the line while he pitted his
abilities against those of an armed foe.  Even if the armed foe was equipped
with weapons and armor a millennia behind his.

A Nation Marine fired a
string of grenades at Watcher, armor piercers that might have actually damaged
the suit, if they had hit.  Might have, if they hadn’t been repelled by the
powerful electromagnetic field that surrounded the suit.  The grenades popped
in the air as they were flung away.  Watcher turned his weapon on the grenadier
and fired a short stream of protons into the man.  Beam hit armor and
transferred kinetic and heat energy into it, megajoules that melted and blew a
hole through the suit at the same time.  The body behind that armor turned
mostly to vapor or ash, the pressure blowing outward and sending metallic
fragments in all directions.  The wreckage that had been a Nation Marine fell
to the ground, and Watcher scanned for the next target with a twinge of guilt
at what he was doing.

These men captured
Pandora
,
he thought, pushing the guilt from his mind. 
They deserve what they get
this day, and are fortunate I am in a killing mood, that they not be captured
and tortured for their information
.  That might come later, when he had caught
some senior commanders that might actually have information of use.

Watcher looked at a
flight of aircraft on his HUD, circling helplessly over the battle, unable to
fire for fear of hitting their own.  With a mental command his three remaining
tanks each fired off a hyper-velocity missile.  The missiles wound slowly
through the overhead foliage, then accelerated at max toward their targets. 
The aircraft barely had time to register the missiles and attempt laser lock. 
One actually got a hit on the missile coming its way, but contact time was too
short to cause any damage.  Three of the four aircraft were blasted from the
sky, while the fourth dropped low and hit full thrust, getting out of the kill
zone while it could.

Something hit one of
the tanks, and Watcher cursed as he lost another of his most powerful assets. 
He ordered the others to go higher into the canopy, realizing that they were no
longer needed in this fight as he watched red dots streaming away, the enemy
routed.  “Close in on that last concentration,” he sent to his Suryan allies,
while he took aim at the hyper-v crew that had destroyed his tank and blotted
them from existence.  “And try to get some prisoners.”

“Acknowledged,” came
the voice of the Suryan Commander who was in charge of their ground forces. 
The Admiral acknowledged a moment later, and Watcher headed that way himself,
blowing away the few remaining enemy positions he encountered.

A signal came through
from his on-board computer, a message flashing on his HUD at the same time as
it contacted his mind.  [All local recon assets that the enemy had in this area
have been neutralized.]

That had been another
battle going on, never in doubt except for the exact timing.  The enemy had
recon drones in the area, and Watcher’s own pizzos had gone after them in a
robot to robot battle.  The drones were larger, the pizzos much more advanced,
and with the downing of the last drone the enemy now only had the takes of
their armored troopers to tell the ships in orbit what was going on.  And the
singular vegetation of this world would not allow orbital sensors to see what
was going on beneath the hundreds of meters of foliage.

[The enemy has found
the wormhole control chamber on the
Donut
,] came the relayed signal from
the Quantum Computer of the station through the quantum entanglement com.

[What can you do to
delay their control?] asked Watcher, already dreading the answer he knew was
coming.

[Nothing,] said the
computer.  [If they present the proper signals they will become master.]

Watcher cursed yet
again.  He had to get Pandora and head back to the station as soon as possible
if he were to retain control.  It would not obey any instruction from him as
long as he was off the station.  That had been the way it had been programmed,
as a failsafe, and there had been no way to change that programming without
destroying the computer.

“We have their
commander,” came the voice of Lt. Commander Dasha Mandrake over the com.  “The
Gods have been good to us, and he is intact.”

“I’ll be right there,” said
Watcher, checking his HUD and seeing that the only red dots were those
surrounded by the green dots of his forces.  He propelled the suit into the air
and weaved through the trees, returning the waves of some of the Suryans he
passed.  Seeing the group he wanted he turned the suit and came down in a soft
landing, then walked up to the smiling Suryan Commander.  She smiled back, her
helmet retracted, and pointed to the closest prisoner.

“This is the officer in
charge of the ground troops,” she said, looking into Watcher’s eyes after he
retracted his own helm.

“Very good,” said
Watcher.  “I need some information from you about the landing field.”

“I will tell you
nothing,” said the young officer, squaring his jaw and trying to glare back at
the superman, but only showing his fear.

I really hate having to
do this
,
thought Watcher, as he prepared his suit to project a pain induction field.  “I
am afraid I cannot allow that,” he said to the wide eyed officer.  “I am very
sorry for this, but you have made it necessary.”

*     *     *

“This is the most
amazing thing I have ever seen,” said Colonel Johanson, walking into the huge
room.  It appeared bigger than a battleship, though he knew some of that was
holographic projection.  But the rows of comfortable looking chairs, hundreds
of them, in front of what had to be advanced tech control stations, those were
not holographic.

“We think they control
the production of wormholes from this chamber,” said the naval Commander,
Hanson, who accompanied the Colonel through the room.  “My guess is that they
also monitored all the gates that were opened across the Galaxy.”

“And how many was
that?” asked the Colonel, looking at the holographic globe in the center of the
chamber that showed the entire Milky Way Galaxy. 
A true Galactic Empire
,
thought the officer as he looked at that mass of stars. 
Like we will be,
someday.

“We figure there must
have been millions of them,” said the engineering officer, shrugging his
shoulders.  “How many million?  We just don’t know.”

“And is this the only
control center?” asked the Colonel, the size of the chamber almost overwhelming
his mind.

“Maybe,” said the
Commander, again shrugging his shoulders.  “Probably not.  We don’t really
know.  Until we can actually tap into this thing, we won’t really know where
everything is in relation to everything else.  This station is just too big.”

That’s God’s truth
, thought the Colonel,
walking to one of the control stations and looking it over. 
Billions of
cubic kilometers.  It would take the population of a world to actually explore
this thing
.  The Colonel looked down at the panel and the chair, then
squatted and touched the seat.  “This doesn’t look like it was made to fit a
human,” he said, looking up at Hanson.

“Probably for an
alien,” said the naval officer, spitting out the last word like it was
excrement in his mouth.  “Of course we’ll have to pull these chairs out of
here, what there are of them, so we can put humans in control of this system,
like God intended.”