To Well And Back (The Deep Dark Well) (30 page)

“We’re ready,” said
Watcher over the com.  She could hear the impatience in his voice despite his
attempt to control it.  Someone else would have heard pure calm, but she knew
him better than anyone.

“I’ve got some clowns
between you and me, lover,” she said, looking at the take from the microbot. 
“A half dozen plug uglies I think are their reaction force.”

“Then we need to wait,”
said Watcher, enunciating each word.

Pandora smiled.  She
knew he could read her as well.  She wanted to get this thing going, for better
or worse.  “We can’t wait too long, lover, and you know it,” she finally said. 
“I got all kinds of movement out here, like more troops are moving into place. 
Soon we won’t have a snowball’s chance in hell.”

“And I am picking up
more shuttles as well,” said Watcher, after a sigh that told her he recognized
the logic of her statement.  “They will be delivering even more Marines.”

“Then we need to move,
and move now,” said Pandora, planning what she would do when she left the
security of this hidey hole.  “Here goes.”

Pandora pulled a trio
of grenades from her suit that she had picked up from the Nation Marines, armed
them, then threw them around the corner into the corridor.  One of the Marines
saw the grenades and yelled something out.  They started to move, but the
grenades were on a short fuse, and went off before they could do too much.  The
two closest Marines caught the brunt of the blast and were blown off their
feet.  Their armor protected them from severe damage, but one lay still after
he hit the ground, and the other staggered up with only one working leg.  The
other men were able to take the blast and keep their feet, and their wits.

The woman from the past
had never thought of herself as a hero, but she had sure acted that way since
she had arrived in the future.  Now she didn’t even think about her actions, or
the risks that she ran.  She just went with the flow and hoped for the best. 
Those were her thoughts as she erupted from around the corner with a mag rifle
in each hand, stocks held under her arms.  Each rifle was set to single shot,
maximum velocity, armor piercing rounds. 

Pandora had always been
a good shot, exceptional to tell the truth.  She had come into the future with
a pair of matched Gold Cup forty-fives, the pistols she had used to win many
contests on Earth.  And now that she was enhanced she was an even better shot,
with a steadier hand, sharper eye, and exceptional targeting ability.  The mag
rifles were made to penetrate the armor of the men she faced.  They were not
intended to take on her level of armor, but three of the men had weapons that
could, a pair of heavy lasers and an auto-grenade launcher.  One man was down,
and one man with a mag rifle was unsteady on his feet.  She instantly
prioritized her targets and attacked.

The first two shots,
one from each rifle, went unerringly into the faceplates of a laser gunner and
the grenadier.  Faceplates shattered inward, the high velocity rounds cracking,
then breaking the hard plastic of the plate.  Both men dropped their weapons as
they began a fall to the ground.  Pandora’s second pair of shots took out the
rifleman, but a combination of firing too soon and the man moving made the shot
at the second laser gunner miss.  That gave him enough time to fire a shot that
hit Pandora on the joint of her left shoulder.  With a shower of sparks the
shoulder froze in place, and Pandora yelped in pain as some of the heat of the
heavy laser beam came through the suit.  She brought the rifle over to point at
the man’s face while the laser continued to burn into her suit.  A shot through
his faceplate and he dropped the laser and fell dead to the floor.

Pandora cursed as she
put a shot through the last rifleman, the one who seemed to be having trouble
getting his suit to respond.  She thought for a moment about shooting the man
on the floor, then dismissed the thought as petty.  He was out of the fight,
and shooting him now was just plain murder, something she did not want to
resort to.  So she stepped over the body and headed for the next target area. 
She tried to move her left arm, but that limb of the suit was frozen, and she
was sure that nothing short of a stay in an armory or workshop was going to
make it functional again.

“We’re burning through
now,” said Watcher over the com.  Then his voice took on a more urgent
quality.  “Your suit is damaged.  I want you to abort and get out of here.”

“No way, lover,” said
Pandi, turning another corridor and opening fire with the grenade launcher she
had picked up from the dead trooper behind her.  “I’m the cavalry, and the
cavalry never turns back just before the nick of time.”

*     *     *

Watcher grimaced as he
looked at the damage readout from Pandi’s suit.  He thought that any rational
being would turn back, instead of bringing such a damaged piece of armor into
combat, though he admitted he would have continued on if it had been he coming
to her rescue.

“Now,” he ordered his
robots, and they all went to work, pumping out high energy laser beams and
cutting the oval piece free from the bulkhead.  In an instant it was done, and
Watcher, along with a pair of his robots, slammed into the piece and ejected it
into the corridor, knocking over two Nation Marines who hadn’t gotten out of
the way in time.  The rest of the Marines started firing at Watcher and his
robots.  Only a few were equipped with mag rifles, and their rounds bounced
harmlessly from the armored superman and his heavy combat robots.  Most of the
others had beam weapons of some sort, and they could be deadly, and evidenced
by one of the combat robots losing a hind limb as soon as it broke into the
corridor.

Watcher turned in that
direction while three of his robots fired the other way.  His particle beam
cannon struck an enemy, tearing through the suit, killing the man inside.  He
moved his aim point as the next barrel rotated into place, and put out another
killing shot.  The robots kept up the barrage, along with some Suryans who had
come out to lend their fire.  He noted two of his robots dropping off the net
and turned quickly in that direction, watching as the third robot was hit by a
powerful particle beam and went down with a hole through its thorax.  Watcher
fired his own cannon, and shouted in dismay as the beam bounced from an
electromag screen in front of the enemy gun that had to have been taken from
some kind of vehicle mount.  He started to adjust his own beam, to change the
barrel settings so they would strip the charges off the particles as they left
the weapon, hoping he could get some into the enemy weapon. 
Too late
,
he thought, as the ominous barrel swung in his direction, until it was pointed
directly at his body.

*     *     *

“We have something
coming out of, I don’t know what they’re coming out of,” said the panicked
voice of the Sensor Officer, over an
Oh shit
by the Tactical Officer.

Admiral Miklas Gerasi
looked up from the repeater screen where he was keeping track of the battle in
the amidships section of his vessel, and swore as well as he looked at the main
viewer.

Something was opening
up the space out there, as big red dots began to form and expand.  The Admiral
could see that there was some other space on the other side, seeded with black
points that looked like the negatives of stars.  And things started to come
through the openings, ships of a configuration he had never before seen.  He
remembered tales of the hyperspace used by the ancients, other dimensions that
his people had still not learned to access.  And here was evidence that someone
else had rediscovered them.  They were here, and he didn’t know their
intentions.

The first ship to come
through its rip was slightly larger than his own, as were the next five.  Then
came four larger vessels, all about five times the mass of his ships.  He
thought they were the biggest vessels he had ever seen, almost two kilometers
in length, with triangular grabber units bow, stern and amidships, and large
boxy apparatus on dorsal and ventral surfaces.  Then came the last two ships
through their wide open rips in space, and the Admiral felt his mind stagger. 
They were easily three, maybe four kilometers in length, and a kilometer in
width, and had to mass twenty million tons if anything.

Two of the Nation
warships fired on one of the smaller of the enemy ships, the escorts.  Their
lasers and particle beams did no damage, striking a strong field and reflecting
off.  The escorts fired on the two offending vessels with bright as sun beams
that tore through the two Nation’s battleships like a laser through thin wood. 
Both vessels went up in a series of secondary explosions, leaving a spreading
debris field where had existed million ton warships with crews of several
thousand each, all gone.

“Do not fire on my
ships,” came a strangely accented voice over the com, while a face formed on
the main viewer of a youngish looking man with blond hair and a square jaw. 
“We have no quarrel with your people, but I will not tolerate aggressive action
toward my vessels.”

“Who are you?” yelled
Gerasi, fear and anger warring within him.  “What do you want?”

“We have come for the
being known as Watcher,” said the man, whose face looked like that of a thirty
year old, while his eyes looked much older.

“We have him aboard my
vessel,” said the Admiral.  “He is my prisoner.”

“We demand that the
being known as Watcher be turned over to us,” said the man, smiling a smile
that did not reach his eyes.

“He is my prisoner,”
said Gerasi, slamming a fist on his chair arm.  “Not to be turned over to a
bunch of newcomers.”

The man nodded and
looked at someone off screen, then said some words that Gerasi couldn’t
understand.  The screen switched to a view of one of Gerasi’s vessels, just
before a trio of bright beams intersected on it, and it disappeared in an
explosion of vapor and the bright flashes of secondaries.  The face of the man
reappeared on the screen.

“Do we understand each
other now, Admiral Gerasi?” asked the man with another cold smile.

Gerasi nodded his head,
not even wondering how the man knew his name.  “I will give my full
cooperation, as long as you don’t harm any more of my ships or crews.”

“I do not think we will
need to,” said the man.  “And you will turn the Watcher over to us?”

“He’s not really my
prisoner,” said Gerasi with a frown.  “He is aboard this ship,” said the
Admiral, raising a hand when the other started to speak, cutting him off.  “We
are engaged with him and his forces at the moment, but I am sure that we will
soon have him.”

“Then I will send my
people aboard to assist in his apprehension,” said the man, looking off screen
again and yelling out some harsh syllables.  “And I can expect your full
cooperation?”

“Of course you may,
uh.”

“Admiral Gunter
Connor,” said the man, raising an eyebrow.  “Of his Imperial Ship
Strausserr.”

“Imperial?”

“We represent the New
Galactic Empire,” said the man with another cold smile.  “And I am here to
arrest Watcher for crimes against the Galaxy, so that he may be tried and
punished.”  The other Admiral glared into the screen for a moment.  “Justice
will be done.”

“We have some very
large shuttles leaving one of those ships,” said the Tactical Officer, wiping
his sweat covered face.

“Do not fire on them,”
said the Admiral.  “No matter what they do, or where they go?  Understood?”  He
looked over at the Com Officer.  “Relay that order to the other ships. 
Immediately.”

It was a sobering
thought.  The Admiral knew that the
Donut
was their technological
superior.  But now they knew that some of the fallen powers had risen faster
than they had.  Sobering indeed, and the Admiral wondered whose side God was
on.  And what would be the eventual fate of his civilization with such other
powers in the Galaxy.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Never stand and take a
charge... charge them too.   Nathan Bedford Forrest

Pandora flew around the
corner as the image of what was there registered on her HUD, sent from the
microbot.  Two Marines lay behind her in the suits she had hit with
microgrenades.  The small explosive devices had been configured as armor
piercers, and had ripped through the suits of the enemy while their mag rifle
rounds bounced from hers.  But she knew this thing was a different can of
worms.

Her eyes verified what
the microbot had sent, that a heavy particle beam weapon had been deployed on
tripod legs in the corridor.  It was obviously too heavy to be carried by an
individual trooper, and had probably started out mounted on an air or ground vehicle. 
Beside it were the large boxy apparatus of magnetic field generators,
protecting the gun from fire from the front.  The gun fired as she started to
raise her grenade launcher.  The enemy saw her and men with heavy lasers
started to turn her way, while the gun elevated and traversed onto another
target.  She didn’t know what that target was, but was sure it was something
she didn’t want destroyed.

Pandi pulled the
trigger and the launcher started to buck in her hands.  The microgrenades,
twenty millimeters wide and packing a level four crystalline matrix punch, were
set for proximity fuse.  They would detonate if they hit something, or on
closest approach to something they missed.  The launcher sent the small rounds
through a magnetic rail at the rate of ten a second.  Within two seconds of
pulling the trigger twenty small explosions rippled around the large particle
beam gun.  Both gunners were hit and went down, and the barrel tracked up just
before letting off a burst of particles into the ceiling.  Pandi tracked the
launcher onto the nearest of the laser gunners before he could get his weapon
to bear, knocking him to the ground.  The other laser gunner fired, his beam
striking Pandora in the knee and crippling the leg of the suit by welding the
joint.  Pandi hit him in the chest with a stream of grenades, then shifted aim
as she fell to the floor.  The grenades hit the magnetic field generator to the
right of the particle beam, knocking it out of action.  Then she hit the floor
and the launcher jarred out of her gauntleted hands.

“Bitch,” yelled the one
surviving Marine, raising his laser and coming toward her in a jog.  He stopped
above her and aimed his weapon at her head, while she tried to get her hand in
the way.  “That’s not going to help you.  The Admiral ordered your dead, and
I’m the one who’s going to do it.”  The Marine kicked her arm away.  She looked
up at the barrel of the weapon, thankful that at least it wasn’t going to hurt,
much.

*     *     *

Watcher stared in
disbelief as the barrel of the particle beam elevated upward just before
releasing the blast of protons into the ceiling, burning a large hole through
the thick hull metal.  He yelled and fired a shot at the gun, his yell turning
into a curse as the beam reflected away.  He fired a second shot and cheered
again as some of it got through. 
She did it
, he thought, checking on
Pandora and scowling as her status came up on the HUD.

The superman rocketed
forward on his grabbers and through the remaining magnetic field, which dropped
as he hit it.  He was over the particle beam and the magnetic field projectors
in an instant.  To his horror he saw that Pandora’s suit was on the floor, a
Marine standing over her with a laser aimed at her helmet.  Without hesitation
Watcher aimed his weapon and fired, and the helmeted head of the Marine
dissolved under the proton beam.  The man fell to the side, his weapon
clattering to the floor, and Watcher was instantly at Pandi’s side.

“Are you OK?” he asked,
putting a gauntleted hand on her armored shoulder.  He retracted his faceplate
and looked down on his mate.

“I’ve been better,” she
said, retracting her own faceplate so she could look at him face to face. 
“Nothing some time in a regeneration tank won’t fix.”

“I’m sorry,” he said,
looking into her eyes.  “I should have gotten here sooner, before those
fanatics could do what they did to you.”

“You got here in the
nick of time,” she said, tears brimming in both eyes.  “Just like the cavalry
is supposed to.  So give me a kiss, you big lug.”

Watcher smiled and
leaned over the woman, bringing his lips to her full mouth.  It was almost like
an electric shock when he made physical contact.  It still amazed him that he
could feel such toward another human.  He had used machines to pleasure himself
before she came, and technically they were much better at it than any mere
human.  But love, and the emotionality that went along with it, transcended the
purely physical.  He kissed her for what seemed like minutes, savoring the
taste of her mouth, until a throat clearing from behind caught his attention.

“I am so happy that you
are reunited with your lady,” said the young Commander of the Suryan
contingent.  “But I think we need to deal with other considerations at this
time.”

“Right,” said Watcher,
standing up and looking down at his woman.  “And I think we need to get you out
of that metal trap you are in.”

Pandora nodded and the
suit began to open up at the nano-seams.  It caught at the arm and leg joints
that had been welded shut by laser blasts.  Watcher squatted by her side and
extruded a small saw from his left forearm, quickly cutting through the metal. 
He pulled the joints apart, and soon she was out of the suit and standing.

“They hurt you,” he
said, looking at the torn bodysuit that showed a multitude of cuts and
bruises.  He looked at her chest, frowned and pulled aside the ripped fabric. 
He roared in anger as he saw what they had done to her breasts.  “I will kill
all of them,” said Watcher, his heart raging, the little bit of
Vengeance
still in him rising to the fore.  “I will go to their home system and leave it
a wasteland.”

“You will do no such
thing,” said Pandora, wrapping her arms as far around Watcher’s armored suit as
possible.  “I know.  I hate them too.  But we will not commit genocide because
of what a few sorry assholes did to me.  You hear me?”

“I hear you,” said
Watcher.  “I…”

“How touching,” said
another voice, one neither recognized.  “But since you have already committed
Galactic genocide, I have no doubt you would do so again.”

Watcher looked up to
see a quartet of armored figures standing thirty meters down the corridor.  The
suits looked unfamiliar, unlike any he had seen, but he could tell they were of
advanced tech, if not quite as much as his own.

“And who might you be?”
asked Watcher, holding on to Pandi and watching as more of the armored figures
came into the corridor.

“I am Colonel Joshua
Mitsubishi of the New Galactic Empire Marines,” said the armored figure.  “And
I am here to arrest you for crimes against the Galaxy.  You would do well to
come with us without a struggle.  I am ordered to bring you back alive. 
Nothing was said about the people with you, but I would just as soon kill them
all for guilt by association, you monster.”

“He’s changed,” said
Pandora, struggling to get past the arm that Watcher was holding her in place
with.  “That was not him.  It was that damned station computer, and the
Vengeance persona it created.”  She glared angrily at the trooper, and Watcher
was glad at that moment that she was not still in her battle suit.

“His guilt or innocence
will be determined by the courts,” said the cold voice of the Colonel, in a
tone that let Watcher know they had already determined him guilty of the crime
he committed five thousand years before.

A shot was fired, one
of the Suryans determined to not let these people take their rescuer.  The
laser blast hit the suit of the Colonel, and was reflected off its field and
surface like a flashlight from a mirror.  The particle beams that reached out
to hit the Suryan were not deflected, and turned the man into an expanding
cloud of steam that burned into the flesh of those around him.  Screams of pain
and surprise came from those so burned, and no one else raised a weapon at the
newcomers.

Watcher raised his
particle beam cannon, which he was sure would blast through the protection of
the officer.  At the same time he tried to sweep Pandora behind him.

“If you fire we will
vaporize the woman,” said the officer, his own weapon pointed at Pandora.

“What do you want of
me?” asked Watcher, lowering the barrel of his cannon.

“Remove yourself from
that suit and come with us,” said the man, keeping his barrel firm on Pandora.

“Don’t do it, baby,”
said Pandi, trying to get around the arm he was holding her with.  “Don’t go
with those bastards.  They’ve already found you guilty.”

“I can’t see you be
destroyed,” he said, at the same time contacting her link to link.  [Come after
me, as I came after you.  I know it is only yourself, but I know you will find
a way.  The
Donut
will give you the means, if you follow our plan to the
next logical step.]

With a thought Watcher
opened his armored suit and stepped out.  One of the men came up to him while
others kept him covered with their weapons.  The man placed magnetic cuffs on
the wrists of the superman and made sure that they were set.  “Do not try to
escape,” said the officer in charge, his weapon now pointed at Watcher. 
“Remember, we can come back here and destroy this fleet, and the woman with
it.  Now come along.”

Watcher took one last
look at Pandora as he was being led down the hall, wondering if he would ever
see her again. 
Maybe I’m paying the price for my past crimes that I am
supposed to pay
, he thought as they led him into another corridor and
toward their shuttle. 
This could be Karma.  Keep the faith, Pandora. 
Remake the Galaxy, the way we have spoken of, whether I am with you or not
.

*     *     *

Pandora felt the
burning in her eyes as the tears rolled down her cheeks, watching the man she
loved being led away like a common criminal. 
But it wasn’t him
, she
thought. 
Not really.  Can’t they see that?
  She shook her head, knowing
that they hadn’t.  After all the craziness she had seen in this Galaxy, she was
sure it wouldn’t matter to a people who had already made up their minds.

“We need to get back
under cover, my Lady,” said the young Commander in charge of the Suryans.  “The
Nation Marines are starting to press again.”

“Maybe we should just
surrender,” said Pandora, looking into the eyes of the young woman, her
hopeless feelings controlling her thoughts.  “All of this is for nothing.”

“I know my people are
not going to surrender again,” said the Suryan, glaring down the corridor. 
“And I know you won’t either.  Watcher is expecting you to come get him.  I
know he is.  And getting captured by these fanatics is not a good start to that
mission.”

“You’re right, of
course,” said Pandi, wiping the tears from her face.  “Time for me to get off
the pity pot.  Get me a weapon, and I’ll be right proud to fight beside you.”

The Commander smiled
and led Pandora off.  But Pandi had to stop every once in a while and look down
the corridor, wondering if she would ever see Watcher again.  And what she
would do without him. 
Change the Galaxy, that’s what
, she thought. 
Daddy
didn’t raise no quitter, and I’m not about to start now.