Deeper and Darker (Deep Dark Well Book 3)

by Doug Dandridge

  The doors to the hangar, the ones that were still working, opened at their approach, and a moment later the shuttle was bumping onto the deck. “All passengers can now disembark,” she said over the intercom, then slumped back in her seat, exhausted.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.

  Charles Peguy

  “They made it back to their ship,” reported Major General Leon, his drawn face white with fear.

  The Emperor looked at the holo that showed the mushroom cloud still rising over the ravaged downtown of the city. He felt the stirrings of regret. Not for any of the individuals he had killed. They were acceptable damage. Or would have been, if the plan had worked. My beautiful city, was his one regret. The moon Kallis was the jewel in his crown, and the capital city had been the glitter in that jewel.

  “Not your fault, Leon,” he said to the surprised General. “I should have given the order sooner.” Or not given it at all. He killed the com and connected to the Naval Headquarters, the people he needed to talk to, since the Army was in no position to do anything at this time.

  The Admiral in charge of Home Fleet was immediately on the com. That was good, in the Emperor’s opinion, since the high brass of all the services were supposed at his beck and call at all times.

  “Admiral, I want those ships stopped,” he told the man. “I don’t care how you do it. Just stop them.”

  “Do you want the Abomination captured?” asked the Admiral, his eyes narrowing.

  “Just destroy them. I do not want them to leave the system. If you have to use up your entire fleet, do it.”

  “Yes, my Lord,” said the Admiral, nodding his head vigorously. “We will stop them.”

  The Emperor disconnected the link and looked over at the holo he had pulled up. He was not too confident in the abilities of his military staff to out think this enemy. Not with the way they had been programed to seamlessly fit into his system. Basically, it took away their free will. And that robbed them of some of their intelligence as well. So he looked over the tactical and tried to formulate his own plan. Which started with. Blowing that ship that’s out there on its own out of space.

  * * *

  “Commodore on the bridge,” called out the first officer to see Pandi walk onto the flag deck, followed by Watcher.

  She was still in her battle armor, the type used for close combat, what she had worn on the planet. It was dented and scuffed, and smelled of blood and smoke. Her shipboard armor waited for her in its cubby, but she didn’t have time to change over at the moment, and the chair armor wouldn’t deploy over what she was already wearing.

  “We have your shipboard combat armor aboard, lover,” she said, looking at Watcher, who was the center of the bridge crew’s attention. “You might want to get into it before we go into battle.” She looked away for a moment, then back at the man who was her superior in every way. “Unless you want to take command.”

  “I am not ready,” said Watcher, shaking his head. “I have no way of linking, which puts me at a severe disadvantage.

  “Then get in your armor, sit yourself in the VIP seat, and advise me,” she said, gesturing to the chair that was just down from the small elevation that put her station above the floor.

  “I just wanted to say how happy we are to see you again, my Lord,” said one of the officers, bowing to Watcher.

  “Avenger is reporting that they are in trouble,” called out the Com Officer

  Pandi looked up at the holo, to see the ship the officer was talking about, still moving toward them, surrounded by so many missile icons she couldn’t count them all. With a thought the count was given to her, one thousand two hundred and fifty-four missiles, less a couple a moment later as the destroyer’s defenses took out one.

  “What can they do?” she asked, looking over at Watcher, feeling helpless. Those people are under my command, my responsibility. If they die, it’s my responsibility.

  “Can they evacuate by wormhole?” he asked, the expression on his face showing that he was trying to link, then the frustration of realizing once again that he couldn’t.

  “Ask them if they can evacuate by wormhole,” she said to the Com Officer. “Captain Mandrake.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” came the reply of Niven’s Captain. Avenger was actually in deceleration mode, and the difference in velocity between her and the other ships was just within the safe parameters of wormhole travel. Barely.

  “Configure the wormhole to Niven to receive their crewmen. Tell them to do the same with Vengeance. That’s the only way they’re going to survive.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said the Captain, looking for a second at Watcher. The com died, the Captain following the orders with alacrity.

  She looked back at the holo and swore again as she saw the hundreds of ship that were moving into firing arcs. None had fired missiles yet, and with a chill she realized why. They were waiting till enough ships had a lock on her to overwhelm her defense, just as they had done with Avenger.

  “Any other suggestions?” she asked of Watcher.

  “Head for Odin,” he said, referring to the gas giant.

  “And what the hell are we going to do there?”

  “Hide,” he said. “Until conditions improve.”

  “We’re getting the first of the crew from Avenger,” called out Mandrake.

  “Good,” said Watcher. “Move them along.”

  Pandi looked back at the close tactical holo of Avenger. The ship was still picking off incoming weapons, but more than enough were going to get through to do the job.

  “How in the hell are they doing this to us?” asked the Flag Tactical Officer. “We’re a thousand years more advanced than they are.”

  “War galleys against man-o-wars,” said Watcher in a quiet voice.

  Pandi nodded, remembering what he had told her once about the disparity in technology, and how it worked in real life. War galleys were a thousand years less advanced than men of war, with their bristling broadsides. A ship of the line could sink any number of attacking war galleys. But given enough of them, and a windless day, the galleys would get through and sink the sailing ship. Another analogy was nineteenth century ironclads versus twenty-first century guided missile destroyers. Same thing, and in the end, if an opponent was willing to pay the price, they could destroy the more advanced ship.

  “And we didn’t expect for them to have this much waiting here,” she said, seeing more icons appearing on the holo as ships came out of hiding from around the gas giant. Where they had been hiding, she didn’t know, but there they were, coming to destroy her command.

  “Set course for Odin,” she ordered. “Get into the atmosphere.”

  “And then?” asked Mandrake over the com.

  “We hide, down deep,” said Watcher. “In the places they can’t reach.”

  It didn’t take long to reach the outer atmosphere of the gas giant, minutes at their acceleration rate, with even greater decel halfway there. Missiles were on the way before they reached it, hundreds of the weapons. The two ships slowed to almost a stop before they knifed into the thin outer atmosphere and continued in. The ships were tough, but going atmospheric was nothing to scoff at. The atmosphere thickened quickly, and minutes after entering, five hundred kilometers in, the pressure was already up to Earth normal sea level.

  “There she goes,” said the Tactical Officer Satyapathy from the main bridge. The icon that identified Avenger blinked for a moment, then disappeared. The local probes were all connected through that ship, and they only provided vid of the moment before the destroyer died, a hundred missiles exploding in bright, expanding points of light as they were hit by lasers and counter missiles. Parts of the ship’s hull puffed metal vapor as heat and radiation flood into the vessel. And then the vid went dead, the last view a missile streaking in, the specter of doom that destroyed the vessel.

  “How many did we get out?” she asked the Captain over the com.

  M
andrake looked off the holo, probably to her own com officer. “We got all but twenty-seven of them,” said the Captain with a grimace. “The Captain, of course, would have been the last off, and died with his ship.”

  “So many dead,” said Pandi, closing her eyes and palming her face. This had been a disaster from the start. Death was something she could handle, as long as she was the only one at risk. Like when she had fought the Nation of Humanity in the Supersystem. I don’t think I’m cut out to be a task force leader. Or even the captain of a fully crewed warship. A single raider is probably all I should be allowed to handle.

  “You shouldn’t have come after me,” said Watcher in a quiet voice. “But since you did, you must understand the price that comes with command.”

  “Missile impact in sixty seconds,” called out Satyapathy. “Our lasers are obscured by the atmosphere.”

  “What’s the pressure?” asked Watcher, staring at the holo that showed a hundred missiles about to hit the edge of the atmosphere.

  “Twenty standard atmospheres,” said the Sensory Officer. And they were now six hundred kilometers in.

  Pandi looked over at Watcher, wondering what he was thinking. He was looking at a viewer that was showing a shot of the layers of clouds they were moving through. The clouds seemed to stretch up and down into infinity from their viewpoint. Massive bolts of lightning flared through the sky, their rumble vibrating the hull.

  “How much pressure can these things take?” asked Pandi, looking out over the hundred shades of blue that made up the atmosphere.

  “They’re rated at over a thousand standard atmospheres,” said Watcher, looking over at the holo that showed the damage to the vessel. “With our current damage, probably not more than seven hundred. Which should be more than they can handle, if they’re stupid enough to come in after us.”

  And if we survive those missiles, thought Pandi, watching as they hit the outer atmosphere, now less than three seconds from impact at their present velocity. They covered less than half that distance, flaring with heat that increased exponentially with the density of the gas, before they started to drop off the plot. A series of explosions ripped through that part of the atmosphere, a wall of fire roaring inward.

  “Brace for impact,” yelled out Watcher. The shock wave of gigatons of blast from antimatter warheads hit the ship, tossing it despite its grabbers and inertial compensators. Pandi grabbed onto the arms of her chair as the blast wave rolled by, heading further into the gas envelope.

  “How did you know?” she asked her lover.

  “They were heading in at high velocity through an atmosphere as thick as several hundred meters of water. There was no way they were going to be able to handle the heat of that friction.”

  “Orders, ma’am,” asked Mandrake over the com.

  “Take us down to seven hundred atmospheres,” said Watcher, looking over at Pandi as if asking permission. “They won’t be able to track us down there.”

  “Take us down to that level,” she said to Mandrake. “Signal Vengeance to follow.”

  The cloud formations on the viewer changed, the clouds getting thicker, until the atmosphere turned opaque, and deeper in color. Pandora pulled up information on the planet, trying to get as much knowledge on the world as she could, seeing as they were going into the belly of the beast.

  Odin was a warm Jupiter, about twenty percent more massive than the largest planet of the Sol system. Its proximity to the sun, as well as the gravitational heat from deep inside, raised the temperature of the planet to several hundred degrees centigrade at the surface. That helped regulate the temperature of the moons in orbit, that were actually at the far end of the Goldilocks zone. The pressure kept going up as one moved deeper into the tens of thousands of kilometers of atmosphere, until the mostly hydrogen became a liquid, then, even further down, a solid. Their ships would crush like eggs, well before they reached the liquid section.

  Behind them the next wave of missiles struck, sending another blast into the gas giant. This time the ships were far enough in that the blast that reached them was not of the same magnitude, though they still sent some turbulence into the vessels. And still they dropped, fifteen kilometers in from the far edge of the gas envelope, where it started turning liquid, at a pressure of seven hundred atmospheres.

  “We’re getting some leaking in the hangar,” called out the officer in charge of flight operations.

  “That’s the one with the damaged door,” said Pandi, pointing at the red area on the schematic. “They tried to seal it.”

  “Just make sure that the hatches into the hangar are sealed and it should be fine.” Watcher started to walk from the bridge.

  “Where are you going, lover?” asked Pandi.

  “I have a date with a doc,” said Watcher, looking back with a smile on his face. “We’re safe enough here. And I would like to have the implants to be of use.”

  He walked out and Pandi smiled as well. When he’s whole again, we’ll be invincible. She tempered that thought with the realization that he was still only flesh and blood, and therefore no more invincible than any other living creature.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Tyrants are seldom free; the cares and the instruments of their tyranny enslave them.

  George Santayana

  “They’ve gone into the gas giant, my Lord,” said the Admiral. “Our ships are scanning for them, but we haven’t gotten a return as of yet.”

  “And you won’t, you fool,” growled the Emperor. “Even with our best instruments we can’t see more than a thousand kilometers into that envelope.”

  “Then, what should we do, my Lord?” asked the Admiral, who really didn’t have the imagination for this, and knew it, and was frightened to death that his Emperor might make that judgment on him.

  “Send probes down,” said Kitticaris, his face flushing with anger. “Send ships in if you have to. But get them.”

  Idiots, thought Kitticaris as he killed the com. Why can’t I get one senior officer who can think for themselves. Just one.

  The Emperor sat at his desk and thought. Despite all of his best efforts, Watcher’s minions had been one step ahead of him the entire way. And since Watcher was in his custody, the genetic superman couldn’t have had anything to do with their plans, unless he had some means of contacting them that the Emperor didn’t know about. Impossible. We took everything out of him that had any kind of net connectivity. Unless he had a purely biological component we couldn’t find.

  “Pah,” said Kitticaris, getting up from his desk and storming over to the holo of the system that occupied one wall. It doesn’t really matter if he was leading them or not before his escape. He is definitely leading them now. Unless we got lucky and hit the shuttle he was on during that escape.

  The Emperor didn’t really believe in luck. There was a probability that Watcher’s shuttle had been hit on the way out. One in four, which meant there was a three out of four chance that he got away. The smart money was to be he was on one of those ships.

  And they’re all equipped with multiple wormholes, he thought. Possibly wormholes that lead back to his station? And if they evacuate through those, what am I to do? If he gets back to his station, he will eventually come here, again. Only this time with an overwhelming force.

  Kitticaris turned his back on the holo and walked to the entrance of his office, connecting with a com link and giving his orders as he went.

  * * *

  “Hernandez has already sold you out,” said the Inquisitor, his warm eyes looking down into Garcia’s. Looking down, since the Inquisitor was standing above Garcia, who was strapped into an interrogation chair. “So why don’t you make it easy on yourself and just give us what we need.”

  “If Hernandez already gave you everything, why do you need me to talk,” said Garcia, wincing from the injury to his neck as he moved his head. They had really worked him over since he had been in their custody. Physical beatings, electric shock, chemicals, direct mind s
timulation. All had failed against a man who already knew he was dead, and was not willing to give them any other kind of victory.

  “Just verification,” the Inquisitor told him. “You can end this in a moment, if you just cooperate with us.”

  “And then you take me away for experimentation, followed by vivisection,” said Tony with a smile. “What a deal.”

  “That process can be as long or as short as you want it to be,” said the Inquisitor with a scowl. “If you want to be a fool, you will be in for a long period of very intense pain. If you’re smart, we can give you a quick and painless execution. It’s up to you.”

  But the others don’t know all that I know, thought Garcia, wishing he could get up from this chair for just a moment, so he cut strangle the smiling fool. They don’t have the names of the other cell members in the city, and our contacts without.

  The Inquisitor looked up and quickly bowed, an expression of panic flying over his face for a moment before he could compose himself.

  “Is this the man?” asked a voice from outside Garcia’s field of vision. A deep, very familiar voice.

  “He is, your Majesty,” said the Inquisitor, his head retained in a half bow position. “He was just about to give us the information we need to crack the resistance once and for all.”

  “And that’s a damned lie,” growled Garcia.

  The Inquisitor smacked the Opposistion leader across the face with a surprisingly hard open hand blow. “Keep a civil tongue in your head, traitor,” hissed the Inquisitor. “That’s the Emperor you’re speaking to.”

  It’s monsters I’m speaking to, both of you, thought Garcia, shaking his head to clear it from the blow induced confusion.

  The hated man came into view, moving around the chair, then thrusting his face close to that of Garcia. Tony tried to pull up the saliva to spit, but his mouth was too dry, a combination of not being given water for many hours, and fear.

  “You harbored the woman, yes?” asked the Emperor in a quiet, almost gentle voice.