Deeper and Darker (Deep Dark Well Book 3)

by Doug Dandridge

  Now it moved down into the trees, scanning the woods for life forms based on their heat signatures. It catalogued thousands of creatures, birds, small mammals, even a few larger animals it identified as human beings, though all of those were several hundred meters in any direction from the probe. Again the information flowed both ways, and the probe dropped to a hover near the ground, hidden within several large shrubs from any view from the nearby walkways.

  The wormhole grew from the probe, until it was a two meter diameter circle that almost filled the entire area. As soon as it stabilized a person stepped out, her eyes searching the area to double check the findings of the probe. Satisfied that she would not need to jump immediately back through the wormhole, she sent a signal through her implant and the portal shrank to its starting microscopic proportions and was absorbed back into the probe. The device moved back into the trees, hiding in the foliage and allowing her to stay in link with her ship, hanging out in an orbit around Odin at two hundred thousand kilometers.

  Pandora moved from the brush and onto the edge of the walkway, keeping to the shadows. She was a bit nervous at her isolation. The farther she moved from the probe, the longer it would take to get away if something happened. Her captains had raised hell when she had suggested that she needed to be the one to scout out the city and make contact with the Opposition. Contact they would need in order to find Watcher. She had listened to their arguments, then pointed out that she was more likely to blend in with the local population than they were. Nanotech had turned her red hair black, her eyes brown, and added just a hint of tint to her skin. They still argued, and she overruled them.

  I should have waited for local morning, thought Pandi, moving in the shadows toward the exit to the park that showed on the map projected into her occipital lobe. She looked up through a break in the trees at the slightly glowing orange body of the gas giant, Odin, and the huge military station that hung over the city on grabber units. That there is a symbol of oppression if I’ve ever seen one, she thought, staring at the station, her eyes zooming in for a closeup of the structure. She could see the laser installations that could vaporize ground targets at a moment’s notice, or fire upon any ship that approached the moon from the gas giant side.

  She noticed the background noise a moment later, something else she had been warned about. To the naked ear it seemed just a low level buzz. Using her heightened hearing and the computing power of her neural implants, she was able to parse the signal and listen in on the subliminals that were saturating the air. Messages of obedience, of indoctrination, calls for snitching on fellow citizens. Enough to brainwash the strongest mind, though she didn’t think she was in any danger herself. With a command to her implants she blocked the signal, and didn’t have to listen to the offensive propaganda any more.

  Something moved in the woods, and Pandi crouched, staring in that direction, her augmented eyes drinking in every photon. It was past curfew, and she had no reason, and no documentation, to allow her to walk the streets. She was taking a risk walking the city at night, but it was one she was willing to take, since she really didn’t know how much time Watcher had left. She dreaded the possibility that she had already waited too long, and that Watcher was dead.

  Jerwiki didn’t seem to believe that had happened yet, she thought with a bit of hope as she saw what looked like a feral cat come jumping out of the area where she had heard the noise, something clutched in its mouth. She allowed herself to relax, then tensed up as she heard another sound coming from the same general area. And that’s no pussy cat, she thought, shifting her own position, moving like she had as a child in the Alabama woods when playing capture the flag with her scout group.

  It took her several minutes, moving slow and quiet, to get a good look at the area in question. There was definitely something man sized there, moving around, squatting over something that looked disturbingly like another person. Am I seeing a mugging, thought the woman, not sure what she needed to do. What I need to do is not get involved, she told herself as she started to move away. A gasp, followed by a sob, stopped her in her tracks, and she turned to look back at the tableau taking place under the dim light of the gas giant.

  Goddamit, she cursed to herself, seeing the, person, who was on the ground, struggling to get up, while the human who squatted over her pushed down with one hand, while he, or she, raised something that glinted in the night into the air with the other hand.

  Pandi ran forward with a rush of speed. Watcher had augmented all of her physical systems, which of course included her brain. Not to his standard, since there really was no way to do that without starting out with an embryo. But to as high a standard as was possible with a normal human genome as the starting template. She ran with a speed that would have amazed the most experienced talent scout for any of the sports leagues of old Earth. She covered the more than forty meters in less than three seconds, the man just starting to turn her way with an expression of shock on his face, his knife held up for a killing plunge into his victim’s chest.

  Pandi struck the big, muscular man with a left hook to the jaw in passing, then spun in place to throw a straight punch with her right hand into the center of his face. Her blows had the force of enhanced muscles and incredible speed behind them, and the man’s head snapped one direction as his jaw shattered, then back from the force of the second blow, severing his spine as the Atlas sliced down into the column at the Axis.

  The man was unconscious an instant before his heart and lungs lost all signals from his brain, and was stone dead by the time he hit the ground. He landed across the woman who lay there with glazed eyes and an expression of confusion on his face. Pandi grasped the man’s clothing by the shoulder and jerked him off her, throwing him five meters away to land on the walkway.

  “Are you OK?” asked Pandi, kneeling down by the woman.

  “Thank you,” said the woman in a quiet voice. “He was going to kill me.”

  “You’ll be alright,” said Pandi, patting her on the shoulder, then standing up. “I’ve got to go,” she said to the woman, then took off at a jog back into the wooded shadows.

  Now why in the hell did I have to get involved in that? thought Pandi as she moved through the woods. Now there’s a witness to my being here, and a goddamned body that someone will find. Pandi shook her head as she closed her eyes for a moment, seeing the image of the woman she had just saved. You did it because you’re still a goddamn human being. You still have a conscience, no matter how much blood you have on your hands, and you couldn’t just let that woman die because some sadistic asshole took that moment to sate his psychopathic tendencies on her. You did it, and now you have to live with the consequences. If you’re lucky, there won’t be any. If not, you’ll just have to work your way around them.

  Pandi slowed to a walk just before she got to the edge of the park. She stood under the trees, looking at the map on her implant, finding the closest route to the apartment she was seeking. That looked way too exposed to her, so she decided on the alternate route, one that would keep her in the shadows and hopefully away from the sensors that seemed to be everywhere. The psychopath back in the park seemed to have a good idea on how to avoid them. Wonder how many women he killed before I took him out?

  I don’t have time for this, she thought, linking with her probe, then hacking into the computer system that watched over this part of the city. She smiled as she saw control of the systems for three blocks in each direction come under her command. She made sure that any sensors that might catch her were looking another direction, then moved out of the woods and walked quickly across the street. In a few seconds she was again in the shadows, any directional lights turned away from her.

  The city looked unreal to her. She had been in many of the largest cities of old Earth. New York, Tokyo, London, Paris. All were alive throughout the night, cities that didn’t sleep. People on the walkways at all hours, going in and out of bars and clubs. And this city, as large as any she had ever visited, was
dead at an hour that was not all that late. It made her feel uncomfortable to think of the isolation these people were forced to endure with a curfew in place. She looked around, seeing only the things that were allowed on the streets at this time.

  Now she was exposed to the flashing posters that seemed to dominate every building side, advertising things like vehicles, household appliances, and other sundries. But here again was a subliminal message played out in subordinate patterns of light, ones she could read with ease. This is a slave society, and everyone is kept in line by the powers that be. Jerwiki had warned her about this, but to actually experience it was something else. If not for her more advanced tech she might find herself caught in the same trap with sufficient exposure.

  Don’t get too cocky now, woman, she told herself as she moved quietly to the end of the block and turned down the street she wanted. Her clothing, which looked pretty much like the latest fashion of this city, blended with the shadows in a manner that regular garments couldn’t. Her dark hair altered under the ministrations of the nanites, losing all reflective qualities. Anyone who saw her was sure to doubt what they had seen for the first couple of moments, which could give her time to move away from the line of sight. Or at least that’s the theory.

  Pandi moved up the street until she reached an alley. It was dark, but her map of the city showed it was well seeded with sensors as well. Which made sense, since the dark alley was where people most likely to want to move without notice would go. Again she made sure the sensors were not pointed her way, giving her just enough room to move without making their placement too suspicious. That was the real danger. If there was a human controller sitting somewhere, monitoring the system, and there was sure to be, they might take manual control of the sensors and scan suspicious areas.

  This is the part I really don’t like, thought Pandi, as she came to the place where she would leave the ground. It was foolish to think she could just walk in the front entrance of this building without someone taking note. Climbing was not her favorite activity. Not that she was afraid of heights, but there was a big difference from being suspended in space and hanging in the air in a gravity well.

  She reached into the satchel that she carried under her cloak, her Bag of Tricks as she called it. She pulled out the special gloves and slid her hands into them, then reached down and activated the shoes she was already wearing. Placing the gloves against the wall, she pulled herself up till she could plant the toes of her shoes against the surface. Then, with alternating movements of her hands and feet, she started climbing the wall, the nanites in her contact surfaces bonding and unbonding with the plasticrete of the building.

  It seemed to take forever, and even her augmented muscles were protesting as she reached the top of the building and pulled herself over the safety wall. She looked down with quivering arms and legs at the alleyway below. I don’t believe I climbed this bitch, she thought as she removed her gloves, then deactivated the gripping function of her shoes.

  There was only one pole mounted sensor on the roof, and she didn’t even bother to take control of it as it rotated slowly on its path. She moved to the door that led into the building, and was gratified to find it unlocked. At least I don’t have to cut anything, she thought, ducking through the door and closing it behind her.

  It only took a few minutes to work her way down the building stairs to the level she wanted, then down the hallway to the door that was her target. Well, what do I do now? Knock?

  She wasn’t sure what that would get her. The man might think she was mad. In fact, he might call the police, just to cover his own ass. And she couldn’t afford that.

  This time she pulled the small laser from her bag and set it to do the job she needed it to do. First she hacked into the building system and through it into the apartment, disabling the alarm that it was equipped with. She tried to disable the lock at the same time, but ran into problems with the manual override, a simple deadbolt that the occupant threw from the inside. A one second blast of photons and the deadbolt lock was destroyed, and she pushed the door open and moved quickly into the apartment. A dog started barking, a small animal by the sound, something she really hadn’t expected.

  The room lit up as soon as she entered, and she immediately started looking for the occupant, hoping he was home.

  “Don’t move,” said a voice from the living room, and she had her answer as to where the occupant was. “I have a gun, and I’ll take your fucking head off if you make one move.”

  * * *

  “You won’t believe this, sir,” said the uniformed Lieutenant, walking into the office of the Captain of the Secret Police.

  “Amaze me, Lieutenant,” said Captain Rafael Jiminez, looking up from his flat comp with a frown. And just what the hell could be going on at this time of night that could be of any importance?

  “There was a mugging in Liberty Park early this morning,” said the uniformed cop. “Wendy Luna was out after curfew, with reason it seems. And she was attacked by the Cutter.”

  “So you have another attack by a serial killer? Interesting, but not really in my line of work.”

  “We found the Cutter, dead at the scene,” continued the Lieutenant. “His victim survived, and saw her rescuer.”

  “So some citizen took out the serial killer you all have been looking for,” said the Captain, giving the uniformed cop a cold stare. “And I assume this guy had a good reason for being out after curfew.”

  “It was a woman, sir,” said the Lieutenant, a look of disbelief on his face. “And our witness said she hit the guy with two bare hands and killed him. We’ve looked at the body, and no one I know could have hit someone like that, much less a woman.”

  “And where did this woman go?” asked Jiminez, leaning over his desk, his attention now focused on the inexplicable. Which, to his mind, could only mean someone had come to his planet that they didn’t know about, with capabilities that screamed danger.

  “We have no idea,” said the officer. “There was no record of her in the park, and no record of anybody leaving the park during that time period. And there is some evidence that the area security systems had been tampered with.”

  “Put out a planet wide bulletin,” said the Captain, sitting up in his chair. “We need to find her.”

  “Planet wide, sir?”

  “I will kick it upstairs and take care of that part,” said the Captain, closing his flat comp and standing up. “You just get the local search organized. We have a spy in our midst, and I mean to have her in custody, or her body on a slab, before the day is out.”

  Chapter Ten

  War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

  George Orwell

  “Just how in the hell did you get into my apartment,” growled the man, pointing what looked like a large projectile pistol at Pandi’s head. The small dog huddled against his leg, letting out a low growl.

  I might be able to duck before he hits me, she thought, looking down the what had to be twelve millimeter bore of the gun. Then again, I might not. And it doesn’t do me a bit of good to take a slug like that in my head. She wasn’t too worried about her body. Her clothing also doubled as impact armor, and only a very high velocity weapon would penetrate it. She had the hood of her cloak over her head, and was protected there as well, though a hard enough impact might still fracture her carbon fiber reinforced skull. But a shot to the face would really ruin her night.

  “I asked you a question, lady,” said the man, keeping the gun steady on to her face. “You don’t look like secret police, and they would have just come in as a group and snatched me. So who the hell are you?”

  “Can I sit down?” she asked, showing him a smile.

  “Move toward me,” he said, shaking his head. “Slowly.”

  She complied as he backed away.

  “Now put your hands on the wall and lean into it while I pat you down.”

  “But we haven’t even been formally introduced,” she said with a l
augh, putting her hands against the wall and leaning forward.

  The man kicked one of her feet to widen her stance, which was the last action he took before she moved. One hand came around and grabbed the gun hand, while she twisted her body and brought a foot up to strike him in the stomach, being careful to not put too much into it. The gun dropped from his hand as he grunted and bent over. Grabbing both of his shoulders, she lifted him from his feet and tossed him onto the nearest couch. The dog started barking again, but had the sense to stay away from her.

  “What in the hell are you?” he asked in a gasping voice, laying on the couch as if afraid to move.

  “I’m a friend,” she said, willing her hair and eyes to change color as a sign that she was not a native of this moon. “And I meant you no harm.”

  “You could have fooled me,” said the man, rubbing his wrist.

  “If I wanted to hurt you, believe me, it would have been a lot worse,” said Pandi, picking up the gun from the floor, then walking over to another seat and throwing herself into its padded comfort. “And your apartment was not all that hard to break into, giving the right tech.”

  “You’re not from the Empire,” said the man, his tone a mixture of disbelief and hope.

  “Give the man a prize. Nope, Mr. Garcia. I’m not from here. And neither is my bald friend. You know, the one your head asshole is holding.”

  “And, how did you know to come to me?”

  “Mr. Jerwiki told me that you might be able to help me.”

  “He’s alive?” asked Garcia in surprise. “Shut up, Rupert,” he yelled at the dog, who whined and lay down.