The Deep Dark Well

by Doug Dandridge

  The Deep Dark

  Well

  A Novel of the Far Future

  By

  Doug Dandridge

  Pandi caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. Something in motion among the stillness of the station. Her body tensed as she slowly turned toward the movement, not sure what to expect.

  Some kind of animal was her first thought, as she watched the thing moving in her direction. It was all the way across the long room, a hundred meters or more, and she wasn’t sure if it had even spotted her yet. It behaved as if it hadn’t. Its six legs moved in a most peculiar manner, rotating up and over as the long body slid forward. Not like the movements of a beast.

  Its skin seemed to be made of a series of small scales of equal size. It had no discernible head, just a continuation of the long body. No mouth, no ears. Spots on the forward scales could be eyes, or something else?

  A robot of some kind was her second thought, though like nothing she had ever imagined. She couldn’t guess its purpose from its configuration. Slowly she put the helmet on her head, not wanting make sudden movements that might alarm it. She pushed a button above the faceplate, engaging the helmet sensors. The creature leapt forward in her vision, as the face plate magnified the image.

  Definitely some kind of robot, she thought, wondering if it might be dangerous. On infrared it glowed an even orange color, no apparent power-generating center, as if the entire robot was equally power producing and using. Suddenly her faceplate went blank, opaqued over as if struck by a bright light. That was when she knew she was under attack.

  Dedication

  This novel is dedicated to writer Charles Sheffield. Your words of encouragement kept me going through the hard times of putting my words on paper. Thank you. You will be missed.

  Contact me at BrotherofCats@gmail.com

  Follow my projects at http://dougdandridge.net

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  Copyright © 2011 Doug Dandridge

  All rights reserved.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Books by Doug Dandridge

  Doug Dandridge’s Author Page at Amazon

  Science Fiction

  The Exodus Series

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 1

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 2

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 3: The Rising Storm (Coming Spring 2013).

  The Deep Dark Well Series

  The Deep Dark Well

  To Well and Back

  Deeper and Darker (coming Summer/Fall 2013)

  Others

  The Shadows of the Multiverse

  Diamonds in the Sand

  The Scorpion

  Afterlife

  Fantasy

  The Refuge Series

  Refuge: The Arrival: Book 1

  Refuge: The Arrival: Book 2

  Doppelganger: A Novel of Refuge

  Others

  The Hunger

  Daemon

  Aura

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  Chapter 1

  Twinkle twinkle little star

  I only see you from afar

  Up above the world so high

  Before I reach you I will die

  Deep space astronaut's ditty

  July 9, 2087. Kuiper Belt, Sol System.

  "Look at the size of that friggen thing," growled Zhokov, his sour breath washing over the crowded bridge of the Niven as he leaned over to get a look out the view port.

  Damned Russian bastard, thought Pandi Latham, shrugging a shoulder in an attempt to get his big paw off of her. Always making overtures toward her, all the way out here from Harrison Base.

  "Just how big is it?" asked Captain Michael Morrison in his clipped British tones. "I have never seen anything that big outside of one of the habitats."

  Pandi still thrilled to the sound of that cultured voice, even as the captain said he was enchanted by her soft, Alabama drawl. Luckily they had paired up early in the mission, and he had made his claim to the only available female clear to all of the other males of the crew. All the other males with the exception of Zhokov that is.

  "Almost 2,900 meters in length," said Pandi, looking at the display of her Doppler laser station. She looked up and out of the viewport at the dark bulk of the ship illuminated by the running lights of the Niven, and the faint rays of the far distant yellow dwarf star they called home.

  "Nobody in the system ever put anything that big into space!" said Morrison. "At least nothing that was meant to travel."

  "What about the deep space freighters?" said Lee.

  Yeah, right, thought Pandi. Nobody even bothered to comment on that statement. Sure, some of the ion freighters were well over three K's in length. But those were stick figure ships, shaped much like the three hundred meter length of Niven, with a long boom protecting the crew compartment from the fission reactor, and the length of the particle accelerator tubes making up much of the rest of the ship's length. This thing is massive, she thought, at least four hundred meters along its narrowest dimension. It appeared like what one would imagine a space going passenger liner to look like, some centuries into the future.

  "Start transmitting video back to Harrison," ordered Morrison, as the Niven jerked with the push of its lateral thrusters, making the last adjustments to match vectors with the strange vessel.

  "Aye, sir," said Lee, making sure the com laser was aligned on the base, four and a half billion kilometers away and moving farther every second. "They should receive our first transmissions in 4.28 hours."

  Suddenly the Niven shuddered, as if all of the attitude thrusters had fired in a sequence intended to cause the most disruption possible. Pandi looked over at the pilot console in front of Morrison. No indicator lights were on.

  "Engineer," shouted the captain, "check on the attitude subsystems."

  "Aye, sir," said McIntyre, the engineer, looking over his board. "No activity on the thrusters."

  "Illumination, captain?" asked Pandi, hands hovering over the spotlight controls.

  "No sign of activity, is there?" he replied.

  "No sir," replied Pandi, looking over her passive scan displays, "Still a small flux of gamma radiation. Either fusion or MAM."

  "Ma'am?" asked Zhokov, looking at Pandi with a leer.

  "Matter-antimatter," said McIntyre. "The annihilation of the two opposites gives off energy in the form of gamma radiation."

  "But no change in its status, Pandora?" asked Morrison.

  "No, sir," said Pandi, grimacing at the use of her given name. Morrison was normally very proper with her, she knew. But he must be using the name that only her lover could get away with to relieve the tension. Of course it was a two edged sword, she thought. The use of her real patronym also reinforced the fact that the attractive redhead, the only woman on board the cramped ion explorer, was sleeping with the captain. As much as Pandi loved sex, and sex with Morrison was very good indeed, she was still only a one-man woman, at least one at a discreet period of her life.

  She looked at the small mirror she had set over the upper display screens. Her long red hair was set in a braid to keep it out of her way in the zero gee environment. Laugh lines around her deep blue eyes, heart shaped face covered with fair skin and a
light dusting of freckles. Not bad for having had her forty-fourth birthday just five days ago. Michael said her body was still fine, athletic with small perfect breasts, even if her coveralls disguised her shape.

  "Go ahead," said Morrison, still staring intently at the shape framed against the bright cloud of stars that made up the disk of the Milky Way.

  Pandi's fingers flew over the touch pad, flooding space with bright illumination as she maneuvered the banks of lights to bring the mass of the intruder under coverage. Her breath caught in her throat as the beams of lights played across the hull of the ship. As impressive as it had looked looming out of the darkness, it was even more so under the glare of the lights.

  "Looks like somebody or something didn't mean this baby well," said McIntyre, nodding at the huge cylinder of the spacecraft. Huge half globes of silvered metal lay at one end of the long vessel, a curved prow at the other. An enormous oblong of shimmering transparency, half a kilometer long, lay near two thirds of the way from the bow. The cause of the lifeless condition of the ship was also apparent. For almost two kilometers along the near side of the ship ran a pair of gaping wounds in the skin, where supporting ribs were exposed to the vacuum of space. The far tract ran over the transparency, leaving a gaping hole in the dome. Further across the hull lay another gaping hole, this deep into the hull itself.

  "What the bloody hell would do that?" asked Morrison. "Meteors?"

  "Not likely," said Zhokov. "They would have to be two of them, both traveling in parallel and striking just right to cause such a pattern."

  "Shells?" said Pandi, letting the excitement of the moment get past her revulsion of the Russian. But he had fought in the Geneng Wars. He knew better than any of them what were the capabilities of weapons of heavy destruction.

  "The lines are too even," said Zhokov with a smile. "Shells would have left a line of holes joined at the edges. Those lines are too straight. More likely a beam weapon of some type. But something a lot more powerful than anything we know of."

  "Is it Alien or human?" asked Lee.

  "Based on the level of technology apparent in its size I would vote for alien," said McIntyre.

  "Me also," said Zhokov. "Based on the damage done by the beam weapon."

  "I would say human," said Morrison, "based on the improbability of another species using English as their primary language."

  Niven had drifted up over the top of the ship on her plotted path to circumnavigate the intruder. A bank of lights illuminated the hull to the front of the control bubble of the huge vessel, and all eyes strained to make out the arch of letters across the hull, as well as the line of letters and numbers to the front.

  HERNAND

  C7942

  Niven shook violently yet again, as if all the thrusters had gained a magnitude of power and were determined to shake the ion explorer apart. Crew grabbed for whatever they could to steady them, as eyes searched displays to see what was happening.

  "What the hell is causing that?" yelled the captain.

  "Nothing on the monitors," said Pandi. "Doppler laser shows that the alien is also shaking at the same resonance."

  "Some kind of energy our particle detectors can't pick up?" asked Morrison.

  "That's impossible," said McIntyre. "All energy is is fast moving particles. We should be picking them up."

  Narrow minded fool, thought Pandi. Even her fundamentalist minister father, with his Southern Baptist upbringing, knew that humanity didn't know everything about the Universe. It was likely to be stranger than any of them could imagine. But many scientists thought that everything there was to know was known. Anything not possible according to current dogma was not possible period.

  The shaking stopped as suddenly as it started, leaving them none the wiser for its cause.

  "Captain," said McIntyre in a quavering voice, "I suggest we get the hell out of here."

  "I agree, sir," said Lee. "We are at a disadvantage here."

  "Afraid of the unknown," said Pandi in her best angry voice, eyes glaring and lower lip quivering. First contact with the unknown, she thought, what she had been waiting for her whole life. She had volunteered for the thankless duty of a Kuiper explorer/miner because it offered the greatest chance to be the first to make an on the scene discovery, as unlikely as it was. Damned if she was going to run away at the first little shudder of the space-time continuum.

  "I'm with Panda," said Zhokov, purposely mangling her name. "This is a chance for immortality."

  "Or sudden and swift mortality," said McIntyre.

  "This may be the only chance humanity will have to get a look at this thing," said the captain. "But this is a civilian vessel, and you haven't signed on for this kind of hazardous duty. So we'll put it to a vote."

  The vote came out six for and five against among the eleven member crew. Only those who voted for staying would consider leaving the relative security of the Niven for the unknown dangers of the Alien. They still considered it Alien, for whether it was from another time or another space, it was still beyond their ken.

  * * *

  One hour and twenty-eight minutes after first contact. The airlock door slid open on a scene of unrelieved strangeness for those born to the comfortable confines of Earth, or even the farms and corridors of the off planet colonies and habitats. Stars everywhere, in limitless numbers, their light unpolluted by sources natural and artificial that reigned in the inner system. Objects existed in their millions out here, but space was enormous, and the distances between Kuiper objects were enormous as well. Humankind had been out here for only a couple of decades, and the billions of ice balls of the Ort Cloud were still only known from the pictures or radar images of the nearer and larger few.

  The Ort Cloud, thought Pandi as she jetted her way from the airlock towards the gaping hole in the stranger. The Santa Maria was in the inner system getting ready for the flight out to the Nemesis system, on the way becoming the first vessel to really penetrate into the Ort. She had been really disappointed that she hadn't made the cut for that mission. The chance to be on the first crew to visit another stellar system, even if it was but a small brown dwarf in far orbit around the home star. More qualified computer techs had been the excuse, though she was still sure it was due to her less than glamorous background as a working class spacer, PhD in Aerospace Engineering notwithstanding. Now she felt more than happy to have been passed over, because if she had been in the inner system with the Maria, she wouldn't have been out here in the Kuiper when this monster ship appeared on radar scan from Harrison, skirting the edge of the system on a path that would lose her forever in several months. Blind luck, she thought. Or is it fate?

  Her suit felt hot as she drifted across the hundred meters separating Niven from this Hernand, following the lead of Zhokov, who had almost reached the transparent dome. Crewman Chavis, a large black man from Mississippi, followed twenty meters or so behind her. The temperature out here was only a couple of degrees above absolute zero, she knew. In the inner system heat was more of a problem on EVAs than cold. They normally didn't have to worry about cooling systems this far out. And the bulky suits were insulated enough that their own body temp kept them toasty. It must be the adrenaline shooting through my system, she thought. She did feel pumped. Even her breathing was strained, the sounds of inhaling and exhaling through her com circuit heavy in her ears. She had more than five hours of air at her normal usage rate, maybe three hours of hyperventilating. They would surely be back at the Niven before that. It was still good to know that the diamonoids injected into her bloodstream would give her twenty hours of oxygen if needed.

  "You alright back there, Panda?" asked Zhokov in his heavy accent. Couldn't cover up your physiologicals on an EVA.

  "Yeah," she replied with a calm voice as she repeated a mantra to herself to calm her heart and breathing rate. She caught a flash through the transparent bubble of the helmet out of the corner of her eye and turned her head to the right. A harsh pinpoint flare in the far distance, a
nuclear blast. Another Kuiper miner boosting a comet back toward the fires of the sun. Volatiles for the terraforming of Mars, or fuel for the space industry around Earth. Carter, the ship that had been closest to the stranger when radar contact had been made. The laws of physics had ordained that the Carter would not be able to make contact. Her velocity was too great, and by the time she decelerated enough to change her vector, she would be even further from the stranger than Harrison base.

  It has to be fate, thought Pandi, as she turned in time to watch Zhokov catch himself on the edge of the hole in the dome. She was approaching fast herself, and panic shot through her for a second at the thought of bouncing off the dome and drifting back into the cold depths of interstellar space. She dismissed that thought as she reached out for Zhokov's extended hand, conveniently separated from hers by the twin layers of suit glove they each wore. Of course she was in no danger. She had her own suit propulsion system, as well as the proximity of two other spacemen, and the twin shuttles back at the Niven were ready in case something went really bad.

  "We're here, captain," said Zhokov over the com, as he passed Pandi over so he could reach out and grab Chavis' hand.

  "Everything OK?" came Morrison's voice over the com.

  "Yes sir," replied Pandi as she slapped a transponder link onto the dome with molecular glue. It stuck, meaning that the material was at least something they could understand, even if it didn’t look like anything she had ever seen. "We're preparing to enter the ship right now."

  "Be careful."

  "Aye, sir," said Zhokov, “I think Panda has us covered.”

  Her hands reached to pat the butts of the twin forty-five automatics she had set in the holsters attached to her equipment belt. She had brought them aboard Niven with her personal effects, to the laughter of the other members of the crew. “Do you think you’re going to run into aliens?” they said. Now she was glad she had them, and she didn’t care what anyone said. The filled magazine pouches added to her sense of security.