To Well And Back (The Deep Dark Well)

by Doug Dandridge

  “Stupid beasts,” growled the Colonel, glaring at the scene. “Sometimes they almost act like real intelligent creatures, and do what they’re told. Other times, not. And this is the result.”

  “So you expect to have this base ready within the next month?” asked Gerasi, turning away from the spectacle which left a queasy feeling in his stomach. Dammit, they’re just aliens. It’s not like they’re real people. So why does it bother me to see them relieved of their lives.

  “Of course,” said the Colonel, walking beside him as they came down the hill and started back to the base. “We…”

  The round took the Colonel in the face, where the lightly armored uniform he wore provided no coverage. The bullet punched into his mouth as the last word was leaving, smashing teeth and blasting through the roof of his orifice and into the brain. One second the energetic officer was taking a step, the next he was falling forward to the ground, his life gone. More shots crack by at high speed, two missing the Admiral by the merest of margins. And then he was on the ground, tackled by one of his junior officers, who was pressing the Admiral down and leveling a pistol at the unseen enemy.

  Shots cracked both ways for a minute, the outgoing volume soon overwhelming the incoming by a wide margin. The Marines with the guard detail were firing their auto-rifles, while a couple with lasers cut through the brush like infinite swords.

  Gerasi thought he was a brave man, but he hadn’t been trained for ground combat. His was the first time he had experienced such. He cringed on the ground, glad that someone was shielding his body, glad that others were carrying the fight to the enemy while he felt like he was about to shit himself.

  And then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over.

  “Damned rebels,” cursed a Marine Lieutenant, standing over the body of the Colonel.

  “I thought all the natives were primitives,” said the Admiral, looking down at the dead body.

  “They are,” said the officer, a scowl on his face. “Even the few humans out there who live among the filth. But they have ambushed some of our patrols and armed themselves.”

  “Just wonderful,” said Gerasi, throwing his hands up in the air. He looked over at the officer. “What would it take to secure this area?”

  “Another battalion of Marines would probably do it, sir,” said the Lieutenant, pursing his lips. “But the Colonel thought he could do it with the regiment he had.”

  “And we see what the Colonel’s assumptions brought,” said the Admiral, kicking at the dirt with a booted foot. He looked the Lieutenant in the eyes. “We’ll get you another battalion, and I want everything within four days march of here either in a work camp or dead. Understood?”

  “You’ll have to tell the Exec that, sir,” said the officer with a sheepish grin.

  “Oh, I will, Lieutenant,” said the Admiral, his muscles still trembling a bit and bringing shame to him. “I won’t stand for this kind of action within the perimeter of a base of the Nation of Humanity.”

  I will not stand for this, he thought again, boarding his shuttle on the field. And then his thoughts were on the naval action he would try to precipitate in this system. A kind of fight he was looking forward to.

  Chapter Three

  The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is. C. S. Lewis

  Pandora Latham arched her back as Watcher thrust into her, the pure pleasure driving the breath from her lungs. She opened her eyes and looked into the blue orbs of her lover, dilated open from the excitement of their lovemaking. [I love you,] she thought over the computer link that was allowing them to share all their feelings, emotional and physical.

  [I love you too,] thought Watcher, even as his building pleasure came over the link and drowned her in its intensity.

  He is a superman, she thought in her guarded thoughts. The perfect man. And all mine.

  Pandora Latham had many lovers in her past. She had never had a problem getting a man, though she never had more than one in her life at a time. She had never shied from sex, even after her father told her that her lust would someday doom her to Hell, to burn forever in a lake of fire. To hell with that, she thought as she concentrated on the feeling of his member pushing into her folds, feeling it from both sides. I’ve found the perfect man, and damn me if I’ll ever let him go. Not even Hell can make me let go.

  And then all time for rational thought was past as Pandi felt her orgasm breaking over her. She let out a cry, while Watcher covered her lips with his, drinking in her moans and cries, his tongue questing in her mouth. Her vagina clenched around his member, and she could feel his orgasm build through the link, then let go, at the same time she felt him cum inside her. That set off her second orgasm, building over the top of the first, and Watcher went into his own additional spasm. [Someday I will have your children,] she thought over the link. They both knew she was in a fertile period, just as they both knew the nanotech within her would keep her from getting pregnant at this time. There was too much to do at this time to be burdened with a pregnancy, or a child.

  And then it was over, except for the aftershocks that continued through her augmented nerves. Looking into Watcher’s face she could tell that he was feeling them too, both his own and hers. She kissed him tenderly, happy that he had greeted her when she arrived and whisked her to the bed.

  They lay there for some minutes, basking in the afterglow, until he slipped out of her and rolled over. He rolled back and put his strong arms around her, kissing her on the forehead, then seeking her lips for a deep kiss.

  “What got into you, lover,” said Pandi in a breathless gasp.

  “It’s more like what got into you,” said Watcher, a smile in his eyes.

  “You got into me,” said Pandi with a laugh.

  And I have almost endless years of youth to enjoy him, she thought, rubbing her sweaty body against his. To her a half millennia might as well have been endless. It wasn’t something that she could really imagine.

  “Not if you keep pulling fool stunts like you did on Sapphire V,” said Watcher, his eyes changing from laughter to an angry glare.

  “Listening in on my thoughts again,” said Pandi, her own eyes narrowing. “Those were personal thoughts, not yours to peruse at your convenience, lover.”

  “And what got into you down there,” continued Watcher, ignoring her jab about privacy. “Taking on an entire castle of murderous primitives like that. You’re damned lucky they didn’t crucify you, or burn you at the stake.”

  “They had to come up with some better warriors to do that job, don’t you think,” said Pandi, a smile creeping across her face.

  “You think this is a joke,” said Watcher, pushing himself away and turning his back on her. “People died because of your actions. People who did not have to die.”

  Pandi put a hand on his shoulder and stroked his skin. “I’m sorry. I know you worry about me. But I will not sit here safely on this station while so many others suffer the misery of feudal rulers, dying of diseases we can cure, and poverty we can stop. Surely you can understand that.”

  “Because I was the cause of it, you mean,” cried Watcher, covering his face in his hands.

  “No. No, lover,” said Pandi, pulling him over onto his back, still marveling at the strength that was hers. “No. That was not your fault. You didn’t tell that damned murdering machine to take over your mind and make you a zombie. So quit blaming yourself.”

  “I wish I could,” said Watcher, tears coming to his eyes. “I wish I could.” He looked down for a moment, then back into her eyes. “And you were my salvation,” he said, his hand stroking her cheek. “My beautiful angel. And I can’t stand the thought of anything happening to you.”

  Pandi pushed her cheek into the hand, feeling like letting out a purr. He really thinks I’m beautiful, she thought in wonder. She knew she was attractive, that men seemed to like her combination of fair freckled skin, red hair and blue eyes. She thought she wa
s a little too slender, her breasts just a bit too small. But what woman doesn’t want to look different, she thought with a chuckle. And the wrinkles are all gone, she thought, remembering how smooth her face looked in the mirror, all the little lines around her eyes gone.

  A cat jumped onto the bed with a meow, bringing a laugh from the lovers. “Pudding,” said Pandi, reaching a free hand to stroke the orange tabby cat on the head. “Not afraid now that the bed’s not moving.”

  Watcher stroked the cat on his back while Pandi continued to scratch the top of the feline’s head, eliciting a deep purr. Pandi looked down Watcher’s body, a grin on her face, and her hand soon followed her eyes. Watcher closed his own eyes and purred himself as her hand worked its magic.

  “What say we chase this poor little kitty off the bed for another hour,” said Pandora in a throaty whisper.

  “An hour,” said Watcher, his smile growing.

  “I don’t see any reason to rush it this time,” said Pandi, sliding down so she could be closer to her work. And then her mouth was too busy for talking.

  * * *

  After the bedroom this was Pandora’s favorite place on the station. The room itself was large, a globe over a hundred meters in diameter. But from the central station where she now stood it looked as big as the Galaxy, stretching out across tens of thousands of light years of space in all its glory.

  Watcher sat at the control station, a large chair with minimal controls, his own brain being the primary command system. From here he could tap the greatest power of the station, the ability to open wormholes between any two points within the range of the graviton projectors. Meaning any two points within billions of kilometers of the station. Anything greater and a vessel would actually have to transport the wormhole mouth, or a graviton projector would have to be in place.

  That’s what brought me here, thought Pandi, her mind pulling up the images of her ship, the Niven, destroyed by the very space it occupied. She had been aboard the Hernando, the ship that had traveled through the past by way of another dimension in which time ran backwards as compared to the Universe she was familiar with. And the only way out had been the wormhole. Some people might have been paralyzed at that instant, and been snuffed out as their molecules were ripped to quarks and spewed throughout space by a Universe correcting a paradox. Pandora Latham had not been paralyzed. Watcher called me one in a million, she thought, looking over his shoulder as he moved the view of the holo and honed in on one area of space. She had acted, and saved her life, jumping into a world of wonder and danger beyond her wildest dreams.

  “It seems that our friends are back,” said Watcher as the familiar warships came into focus.

  “Evil bastards,” declared Pandi as she focused on the warships, recognizable by the projectors of their space destroying drives in plain sight on their hulls.

  “More accurately misguided,” said Watcher, his own eyes focused on the dozen enemy ships in orbit around the planet. A K5 Class star shone in the background, Garnett, the sixth system out from the Black Hole.

  “They’re xenophobic sons of bitches,” growled Pandi, wishing she could send her thoughts across the void and incinerate the hyper-religious fools. “They would kill you the minute they had you in their grasp, just because you don’t fit their conception of human.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Watcher, a smile creeping across his face. “I’m sure they would want to torture what I knew out of me, then kill me.”

  “Can’t you just use the graviton projectors and, you know, snuff them out of existence?”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” said Watcher, the smile turning over into a frown. “They don’t have that kind of power at this range.”

  “Then how did your ancestors move stars and planets around?”

  “We moved the projectors to the proper range to construct a gravitational gradient,” said Watcher in an exasperated voice. “You already know this. Why are you letting your hate push you into irrational and wishful thinking?”

  “Because I’m fucking human,” said Pandora, her voice hissing. “Not a damned machine.” Her brain caught up with her words a second later, and she regretted that they had come out of her mouth.

  Watcher stiffened in his chair, then turned his head to look back at her. The anger was apparent in his eyes, and the pain, and he was no longer the rational controlled superman.

  “I am so sorry,” said Pandora, putting her hand over her chest. “I really didn’t mean to say that.”

  “But you are human,” said Watcher, his eyes narrowing. “Controlled by your limbic system, unlike this superior being.”

  “Then why are you so angry, lover,” said Pandi, showing enough teeth to hopefully trigger that male response to the female smile. “Looks to me like your limbic system is not so detached as advertised.”

  Watcher huffed and turned back to the holo, the set of his shoulders showing his tension.

  Only one thing to do about this, thought Pandi, leaning forward and running her tongue around his ear. He tensed some more, then relaxed as a chuckle came from his lips. “I guess I’m not so inhuman after all,” he said through that chuckle.

  “Nope,” she said as she traced her tongue around the lobes, then back to the upper surfaces.

  “Stop that,” he said, playfully slapping at her. “We have work to do. “ He went back to his mental link as she kissed his cheek and then leaned back.

  “Our friends are back in force as well,” said Watcher, zooming in on the Inertial Warp Bubble equipped ships in orbit around a planet circling a G2 class star. Topaz System, the fourth out from the Black Hole. “Looks to be about equal to the enemy.”

  “So we help them out in whatever battle develops and everything is straight,” said Pandi, smiling as she remembered the people from the Kingdom of Surya. They had also been slightly more religious than she preferred, but not in a murderous xenophobe sort of way like those others. She actually had some hope for their civilization.

  “That would be a good plan except for this,” said Watcher, and the view expanded out, until it focused on a series of ripples that seemed to be approaching the Supersystem.

  “Space destroying drives,” exclaimed Pandi, a scowl on her face.

  “The same,” said Watcher, matching her frown. “Which means our xenophobic friends are getting reinforcements.”

  “We’ve got to do something,” said Pandi, a sense of doom pervading her thoughts. “They’ll beat the others, then go about and ravage the alien races. Do whatever they want to do.”

  “And what do you suggest?”

  “We have millions of robots on this station,” said the woman, looking at the ripples in space that presaged more Nation of Humanity forces. “Surely enough to defeat anything they can put into space.”

  “And the robots cannot man spaceships,” said Watcher, ticking points off his fingers. “And they can’t operate in a military role without sentient organics within a half million kilometers.”

  “And can’t you override them?” asked Pandora, planting her hands on her hips.

  [He cannot, Pandora Latham,] spoke the voice of the new station computer in her mind. She still shuddered a bit when the thing contacted her, remembering the trouble the old station comp had put them through. But the quantum computer was an order of magnitude faster than the old, and had not done anything untoward since it had come online. And it especially had not wiped out civilization, like the old one.

  “Well, you can,” she said, looking at the ceiling, as if the comp resided there. “Can’t you?”

  “I cannot,” said the comp in its chillingly human voice, just like that of a seductive woman. “I am hard programmed to not violate the Man in the Loop Accords. There must be human oversight within two light seconds response time for any robots operating with the capability of offensive actions.”

  “What about defense of the station?” argued Pandi, trying to out reason the greatest intelligence ever created. “We could be te
n light seconds response time….”

  “The station has a web of wormhole com systems integrated within its structure,” said the comp. “The same is not true within the Supersystem of worlds. And a single wormhole aperture is not sufficient, as it may close after the units are given a command, in which case a counter-command cannot be given.”

  “So we’re stuck there,” said Watcher, glancing back at his partner. “And we don’t have enough, between the two of us, to man one of the cruisers in the docks, much less a destroyer.”

  “Then we’ll just have to rig up something I can control by myself,” said Pandora Latham, crossing her arms over her chest. “And as many robots as I can carry with me.”

  “That’s too damned dangerous,” said Watcher, jumping up from his seat and turning toward her, a finger pointed her way. “I can’t let you risk yourself that way.”

  “And you can’t stop me,” said Pandi, pouting her lips, then sticking her tongue out at her superman.

  “I…”

  “Pandora Latham is correct, Watcher,” said the comp, cutting off whatever he was about to say. “She has total access to this station and its resources, as per your command. Access that can now only be restricted at her request. As a free being she cannot be restricted unless it is shown that she is not of sound mind. Which, according to all scans, she is.”

  “So there, Mr. I Am In Control,” said Pandi, glaring at Watcher. “Now you can help me get ready for a spoiler mission, or you can get out of my way. So which will it be?”

  “I guess I had better help you,” said Watcher with a resigned tone. “So you don’t get yourself killed. But what about that reformation project you had planned for Sapphire V?”

  “Those primitives will wait,” said Pandi, grabbing Watcher’s hand and pulling him toward the long walkway from the room. “Now let’s get crackin’. And then we can have our going away bash.”