To Well And Back (The Deep Dark Well)

by Doug Dandridge

  Admiral Miklas Gerasi looked over from his seat on the flag bridge of the battleship Orca, his brow raised in curiosity. “What do you have? One of the Suryans?”

  “I don’t think so, sir,” said the officer, looking back at the Admiral. “Take a look.”

  The Admiral looked over at a repeater screen as the vid came through. There were what looked like five objects cruising speedily above the canopy of the jungle. They were just about invisible, with very sophisticated stealth fields that blended them in with their background.

  “We picked them up when a computer scan noticed the foliage moving from something,” said the officer, nodding toward the large screen that sat above his board. “Foliage that was moving in a straight line, while the brush twenty meters to either side was not.”

  The Admiral jumped from his chair and strode to the officer’s station, where he could get a better look at the objects. That was a stroke of luck, thought the Admiral, looking over the officer’s shoulder. Maybe God is favoring us with his Will.

  “Their field is really good, but once we knew where to look we were able to use infrared to pick them up against the slightly cooler vegetation,” explained the Sensory Officer. “Not much of a temperature difference though.”

  “Still hard to see,” said the Admiral, straining his eyes to look at the objects, a velocity vector below them showing two hundred and fifty kilometers an hour speed. “Put it up on the main viewer.”

  The officer nodded, and an instant later the image was on the main viewer, much clearer on the eight by seven meter holo.

  “I would guess that is technology from the Donut,” said the Tactical Officer, pointing a finger at the screen.

  The Admiral walked to the viewer, which had centered on one of the moving objects. He could make out the general shape of it under the stealth field, and wondered if he would have been able to see anything if the object had been stationary. They look like some kind of armored vehicle, he thought, staring at the object. “Zoom in on the center one,” he ordered, and the object ballooned. It was a rectangular box of some kind, and he would have bet his life it was a tank.

  “What do we have that can hit them?” he said, looking back at his Tactical Officer. “Quickly, and with max force.”

  “We have a squadron of atmospheric attack craft at the landing field,” said the Tac Officer, consulting his screen. “They can be there in less than thirty minutes.”

  “Tell them to come in low and slow as they approach the target,” said the Admiral, waving his finger. “I don’t want those things to know they are there until they are on top of him.” And just maybe we can catch that mutated bastard out of his fortress. Please, God, let him be in one of those vehicles, come to rescue his harlot.

  “We’re receiving a sitrep from Colonel McClain,” called out the Marine Liaison Officer. “He says they are being delayed by the forest, but he is triangulating on some signals that might lead them to the target.”

  “Tell him to push on,” said the Admiral, pointing at the Liaison Officer. He turned back to look at the viewer, then thought of something else and turned back to the Marine officer. “Make sure that those transports are loaded with as many Marines as they can fit. I want them ready to take to the air as soon as we find the Suryans and their ally. They can put a blocking force in place so the assholes don’t get away, again.”

  The Liaison Officer nodded and went to work, making sure the ground forces got the orders of the system commander. Before the sun goes down I’ll have crushed you all, thought Gerasi, raising a fist in the air. By my God I swear it.

  * * *

  “Where are you getting this from?” asked Fleet Admiral Nagara Krishnamurta, watching the projected holo that put him in the middle of the Nation Marines that were searching for him and his. The Marines were walking through the jungle, and the picture zoomed in to the face plate of one of the troopers, allowing the Admiral to read the name tag over the plate.

  “About ten thousand micro-pizzos,” said the woman, pausing for a second to take in a spoonful of soup and swallow. “This is really good for rations. I’d have to join your organization, if I didn’t object so much to taking orders.”

  “Surely you had to take orders when you worked as a spacer,” said one of the other Suryan officers, seated nearby and studying the holo.

  “Not like in the military,” said Pandora as she swirled her spoon around in the curry, looking for morsels of meat. “As a civilian I had a little more leeway, and I could always quit between missions.”

  “So these are robots?” asked the Admiral, looking over at the woman.

  “Very small robots,” she agreed, nodding her head. “Not in the class of nanobots. More like micrometer scale. And a whole bunch of them are out there tagging the Nation force, then transmitting the signals back to me.”

  “How are they not picking them up?” asked the Admiral, his eyes narrowing.

  “Oh, they’re probably getting some bleed from a couple dozen or so,” said Pandora with a smile. “At least I hope that’s all they’re getting. But the signal from any one is so small it will really confound their systems. Each only sends a narrow beam out to their nearest fellows, and on and on all the way back to this here place.”

  “Amazing,” said the other officer, watching the view zoom out from the face of the enemy and move upward.

  “The pizzo is not really moving,” said Pandora, grabbing a canteen and working on the cap. “The swarm is simply shifting the take to other bots. But now for some real fun.”

  Pandora took a swig from the canteen, then put it on the ground and closed her eyes, linking in with one of her large combat robots and giving it orders. It shot lasers out to its six companions, all holding onto the sides of the tree they perched on, above the lower level of the canopy. All acknowledge and set the ambush into motion.

  Each robot had a built in microgrenade launcher capable of firing a hundred rounds a minute. Each round was not very powerful, with only a few grams of explosive crystal matrix. But in volume they were deadly. And now the robots fired them on full automatic, unerringly missing the branches below and pushing the grenades through the leaves, which were not hard enough to detonate the mini explosives.

  The take from the pizzos showed two of the battlebots firing away, the extended tube of the launcher retracting for a fraction of a second on each shot from the recoil of the magrail launcher. The take switched swiftly to the scene below the trees, where grenades were detonating in winks of white fire as they plunged among the troops. Several men were hit instantly, grenades blowing holes through helmets and into the skulls below. These men dropped like limp rags encased in hard tubes. The explosions ripped across other men trying to find cover. In moments there were dozens of men on the ground, most not moving, others twisting and turning in agony, while a few tried to return fire.

  A rocket launcher fired below, sending a hypervelocity missile up into the canopy. There really was no target, and the missile should have been a clean miss. By luck it struck a battlebot across the body, blasting the robot in half, and sending the pieces large and small to the ground below. The other five machines scrambled upward into the tops of the trees, putting thick branches between them and the humans they had targeted. In moments they were scrambling away along the treetops, heading for the next ambush site that Pandi had already picked out with her pizzos.

  “That was amazing,” said the younger Suryan, a smile on his face.

  Even I don’t hate the bastards half as much as these guys do, thought Pandi, following the view of one of the robots in her link. But then again, I haven’t been fighting them for over four decades. “I’m down to nine functional robots,” she said, switching the link through the other bots in sequence. “Wish I could have brought the others along, but they kind of got broken when my ship got hit.”

  “How many more did you have?” asked the Admiral, his eyes still locked on the holo that showed the Nation troopers cleaning up the mess and render
ing aid to their wounded.

  “I had a hundred of them aboard Avenger,” said Pandi, waving a hand at her mouth and reaching for the canteen. “This stuff is really good, but maybe a little hot.” She up ended the canteen and took down a large swallow.

  “That is mild curry,” said the other Suryan officer with a smile.

  Pandora frowned at the man, then took another swig. “I had a hundred of them, with enough ammo and power packs for a week’s operations. But the bastards blew holes in my beautiful ship, which continued on into most of my robots.”

  “We sure could have used them now,” said the Suryan officer, shaking his head.

  “We are grateful for what you could do,” said the Admiral, patting Pandi on the shoulder while he shot a look of anger at the younger man. A look he caught, and he shifted his gaze to the floor.

  “Well, it looks like I’m gonna need to do more,” said the woman, her eyes narrowing as she looked at the holo, which had changed to a far overhead view with the red dots of the Nation of Humanity Marines showing through the foliage. A lot of red dots, with some getting very close to the green dots that were the outer sentries at the cavern entry points.

  “What do you need us to do?” asked the Admiral, getting to his feet as soon as Pandora stood up.

  “Stay here and get ready to boogie,” she said, walking over to her armor. She backed into the standing suit, which closed around her and sealed immediately, leaving her head exposed. “I’ll try to give you as much time as I can. And I’ll leave one of the bots with you so you can keep apprised of what’s happening, and we can talk.”

  “Do you know what you’re doing?” asked the Admiral, a worried expression on his face.

  “I think so,” said Pandi, her hand reaching up and patting the hilt of the katana reaching over her shoulder. “If not, I’ll let you know.”

  * * *

  “Aircraft approach,” called out the computer, at the same time as they appeared on the scope.

  Watcher looked at that scope, noting that the returns were very faint. Probably would have been completely invisible to their own technology, he thought, wondering if they were on some kind of a patrol, or already targeted on his own well stealthed vehicles. But they had just come over the horizon, which was not a good altitude for a patrol. All this went through the superbeing’s mind in an instant, the command through his link an instant later.

  All turrets swiveled onto targets, weapons hot, while the tanks changed their vector in a downward angle, trying to get under the canopy before the attack craft reached them. The turrets fired as soon as they had a target. A dozen attack craft roared over, their own weapons flailing out at the tanks. Four of the craft were trailing smoke and pieces of wreckage, and Watcher was sure they would not make the turn to come back. As he watched another attack ship took a triple hit and exploded in midair, raining burning hydrogen fuel and pieces of wreckage onto the canopy of the jungle.

  Fortunately the attack craft really didn’t have a good weapons’ lock on his tanks. But as soon as he fired on them they fired back. A dozen missiles dropped from weapons’ bays and homed in on the laser emitting tanks. Lasers and close in defense systems immediately shifted fire to the missiles, blasting nine of them from the air. A tenth took a glancing blow that sent it spinning into the trees to explode below the top canopy.

  Two of the missiles hit directly into the tanks. One exploded on a turret that reflected the blast away with its superhard material construction. One hit the fourth tank in line over the engine compartment and blasted through, sending the flaming vehicle on a long fall to the jungle floor below.

  Watcher cursed under his breath at losing one of his weapons and the robots aboard, while at the same time thanking the Universe that it wasn’t his command vehicle that had taken the killing blow. The attack craft were turning in a quick loop, the seven that had survived the first pass. The other five were gone, and he was sure they had been too low for pilots to bail, especially the one that had exploded. He willed his group to continue to drop, down to the jungle floor. Explosions rumbled above them as missiles exploded into the canopy, starting fires that threatened to spread even through the moist vegetation.

  They know where I am, he thought, calling up a view from his microsats, cursing himself for not having a permanent feed in place. He could see the seven orbiting above him from their heat signature. And two more groups vectoring toward his position. He was confident they wouldn’t be able to pick up his heat trail. His engines were of the most efficient design possible to his tech base, fusion bottles with wormhole heat sinks pulling all waste radiation away. And the near body temperature vegetation masked what little heat he did put out. They might be able to pick him up with a clear line of sight, if they were in close. Through the canopy they didn’t have a chance.

  The explosions caught him off guard, again. They were dropping semi-smart bombs through the canopy, set to explode when they hit something solid while avoiding the trees on the way down. The first crumps were at a short distance, but came closer, like a giant walking the Earth. In an instant there were explosions all around Watcher and his small robotic command. Missiles streaked through the canopy to send rivers of flame running down the trucks of trees.

  Watcher was in a well-insulated vehicle, but knew that his ears would be bleeding were he outside the tank and not in his armor. The ground rumbled underneath, and soon he lost contact with the vehicle behind his. He tapped into a vid feed from another tank and saw that a pair of bombs had struck that unresponsive vehicles, and it was now a burning wreck. They’re using thousand kilo armor piercers, he thought, which not even his armored vehicles could handle. He had thought about bringing truly heavy armor on this mission, but it would have taken much longer to put them together at the pyramid, and he wouldn’t have had the capacity to carry so many combat bots. Now he regretted that decision as he thought of how it might kill him before he could get to Pandi.

  The jungle was aflame all around him now, and the bombs continued to rain down. How long can they keep this up? he thought, then felt his heart fall as he saw more squadrons approaching on his satellite take. As long as they need to.

  And then a pair of explosions rocked his tank up, and a third started to tip it over. Watcher grabbed on to a hand hold and pulled himself tight against the wall, wondering if he would make it through this low tech but effective attack. He didn’t see the heavy box of crystalline matrix batteries that had not been sufficiently secured. But his head felt them as they slammed hard into his bald pate. And then he felt nothing as blackness closed over him.

  * * *

  Admiral Miklas Gerasi groaned as he watched the first attack run on the stealthed vehicles that left four of his atmospheric craft falling into the jungle while another exploded in midair. He pumped a fist as he saw the hit on one of the tanks that sent it burning through the canopy toward the ground. And then the rest of the vehicles dipped down through the upper canopy and out of sight.

  “Bomb the hell out of that area,” yelled Gerasi into the com link. He looked over at the Marine Liaison Officer. “Get a company transported to that location and scour the area.”

  “What about the airlift to block the Suryans?” said the Marine officer, a scowl on his face.

  “Bring in two companies and send the birds back for the third company,” said the Admiral, his voice rising to a yell. “Must I do all the thinking around here?” Gerasi fumed for a moment, not even thinking about the implications of his last statement, that his Dogmatic Church did not want adherents who thought for themselves, and as a consequence had soldiers who couldn’t come up with an original idea.

  The aircraft circled over the jungle on the screen, dropping bombs that fell through the canopy, only to send blasts of dirt and flame back up. “We lost him,” came the voice of the squadron commander over the net, the acting commander, as the original had been downed on the first pass.

  “Keep pounding that area until you are out of ordnance,” ord
ered the Admiral, looking at two repeater screens that showed a pair of squadrons on the way. And minutes behind them was a dedicated bomber squadron, each plane carrying five times the bomb load of the fighters.

  They really complicated matters for me, thought the Admiral of the dwellers on the Donut. I could have already bagged the Suryans if not for their interference. But if I can bag them as well the Donut is open to us. And with the Donut, the Universe. The Admiral continued to look at the screens showing the ongoing attack on the hidden tanks, dreaming of his people and his faith spreading across the Galaxy, making it a fitting home for humans, and a graveyard for everyone else.

  * * *

  Pandora looked at the images playing across her helmet’s heads up display as a smile played across her face. The Nation Marines were walking right into her parlor, and she was about to slap them, hard. Her eight robots were all in position, stealthed as much as possible and using the foliage to blend in. Her smile turned to a frown as she checked her particle beam rifle. It still had plenty of power in its crystal matrix battery pack. But the last proton storage mag was inserted into the rifle, and it only showed half full.

  Well, I’ve still got the laser pistol fully charged, she thought, patting the butt of that weapon, then reaching over her shoulder to touch the hilt of her katana. And this here bitch don’t need a recharge. At least I don’t think it does. She still wasn’t clear on how the blade worked, something to do with other dimensions and resonances. That it worked, and worked well, was enough for her. And it would be enough for those she introduced to its infinitely sharp blade as well. And I’ve got the built in suit weapons if it comes to that, she thought. They weren’t near as powerful as the carried weapons, but they would do in a pinch.

  She checked the HUD again, noting that the red dots were almost all in the trap. There were still a lot of them outside the box, and the ones that were moving into what would soon be flanking position worried her the most. She couldn’t do much about them at this point, except stay flexible and react to their moves. While hoping they reacted to hers in a predictable manner.