To Well And Back (The Deep Dark Well)

by Doug Dandridge

  Oh shit, she thought, as one of the red dots drifted to the side, right toward one of her robots. The bots were very good at hiding, with their cammo systems rendering them essentially invisible. But they were still solid objects, and someone walking into one could not fail to notice that it was there. The red dot stopped, and she switched her display to a vid of the trooper, who crouched down and was staring at something about where her bot was. She zoomed in on the Marine’s face plate, and could see his lips moving through the plastisteel armor. She glanced up at the smaller screen toward the top of her HUD, and saw that more red dots were moving that way, quickly.

  No plan survives contact with the enemy. Pandora knew this, it had been hammered into her head by Watcher and the learning programs she had used to gain knowledge of military operations, both naval and land. She thought quickly about what to do, and her mouth formed one word to send out to her bots. “Fire.”

  The unfortunate marine who had first spotted her robot was the first to die, an angry red particle beam blasting through his faceplate to destroy the face, then the brain behind it. The trooper fell backwards from the force of the strike, his body lying on the ground while steam and smoke rose in a small column from his helmet. The robot immediately started tracking another target, firing as that trooper went to a kneeling position and pulled his rifle to his shoulder.

  All of the robots opened fire, blasting away with particle beams, lasers and grenade launchers at the eighty-six troopers who had been caught in the box. It was a deadly crossfire, one in which the bots did not have to worry about their own misses hitting them, as they were all linked into a coherent system. Pandora was the reserve, there to contain anything that might break out of the box, or in. Watching her HUD see saw a dozen dots shift to the left, around the flank of her ambush. Crafty SOB, she thought. Someone over there was quick on his feet, and was directing an attack to the flank. Even as she moved she could see one of her robots go off the grid, killed by the flankers.

  Pandora split her attention between the overall display, the vid feeds that were coming in from the bots, and her real time surroundings. She still wondered about her mental abilities since Watcher had augmented her. Nowhere near in his class, but still something greater than the humans of her time. She constantly had to remind herself that superior did not mean superhuman. And now she moved swiftly and cautiously toward the flanking attack, reminding herself of the same.

  Her first target didn’t see her coming. She brought the particle beam rifle up to her shoulder, feeling the vibrations of the accelerator chamber through her armor, and sighted in on the Marine. The rifle bucked in her hand, and the beam went just where she had intended, planning for the recoil. The side of the trooper’s helmet melted and a hole appeared in the sagging alloy. With a tremor in his legs the man dropped to the ground, his weapon falling with him.

  Another turned toward her, swinging what looked like a heavy laser beam her way. Her particle beam cut the weapon in half as it plowed a gash through the armor and killed the man. Pandi fired two more shots at another trooper, missing with the first, hitting him in the arm with the second. The man folded up on himself and hit the ground, what would have been a superficial wound with most other weapons manifesting into a mortal injury as megajoules of heat were pumped into his body.

  Something struck the front of the woman’s face plate, spranging away and leaving a small scuff mark on the superhard material. A couple of more rounds struck, and Pandi ducked down, then prone, returning fire. A tree exploded outward as its sap superheated under the particle beam, then some bushes caught fire from another blast, before she finally found her target and burned through armor and man in a fast blast.

  Pandora checked her HUD and cursed again. The enemy had started rolling up her other flank as well, and there were only four functional robots left. She thought about ordering them to retreat, but by the position of the red dots they would be under fire the whole way. Something exploded near her, throwing dirt over her armor. She jumped up, continuing the motion on grabbers that brought her into the air, then fired at the grenadier she spotted in an instant, burning him down and setting the reloads on his suit into sympathetic detonations from the heat.

  And I was always such a peaceable woman, she thought as she floated through the air and took out another Marine, then dropped to the ground as rounds began to crack around her. Three Marines came at her, and she burned down two before the third, another grenadier, got a string of micro-grenades off and into her armor.

  The small explosives did not penetrate, but they did damage to her outer stealth systems. And a couple hit the particle beam rifle in about the only place they could harm it, right on the control panel to the lower right of the sight. Pandora pulled the trigger and nothing happened. She pulled again, looking at the rifle, and cursed as she saw the scarred area on the receiver assembly. With another curse she threw the weapon to the ground, then pulled the laser pistol from its holster in a motion that would have been the envy of an old west gunfighter. She squeezed the trigger as the barrel tracked up the body of the man, exploding some ordnance on his belt. The beam hit his faceplate and the man pulled his arms over his eyes. But the beam did little real damage to the armor, which had reflective countermeasures built in.

  Pandora turned to escape, triggering her suit grabbers and rising above the ground while pushing her forward. Someone got her in his sights at that moment, and a hyper-v missile flew out of nowhere. It struck on her lower right leg, taking the grabber unit off the suit like a surgeon’s scalpel. The suit unbalanced and flipped over, striking hard the trunk of a tree. Pandi woofed out the air in her lungs and panicked for a moment. The laser went flying from her hand, and she twisted in the air with rounds spranging off her suit. Her HUD showed that a laser had contacted her briefly, but her reflective surfaces shrugged off the light amp weapon.

  I’m gonna get killed up here, she thought, trying to right her suit for a moment, then giving up and cutting the grabbers. She fell the twenty meters to the ground, the remaining grabbers cutting in for an instant before she hit and bleeding her velocity. Shots continued to crack by or ricochet from her suit with thawking noises. She was up on her feet in an instant, running as fast as the suit would take her through some brush. The suit vibrated for an instant, and the sonics warning came up on her display. But the sonic stunner hadn’t been made that would get through this armor.

  Something’s wrong, she thought as she turned and zigged through the brush. The suit was not running fast enough, and she noted some blinking icons on the HUD. Pulling them up she cursed at the damage the servos in the leg had taken. She wasn’t about to outrun anyone, and there were red dots ahead closing in on her.

  Pandora pulled a hand grenade from her belt, setting the explosive through her link, then tossing it hard behind her. She pulled another and threw it ahead, it leaving her hand at the same time the first exploded thirty meters behind. She pulled the last and sent it toward the largest concentration of dots, not expecting to do more than take out a couple of the armored warriors. But any confusion she could cause would be to her advantage.

  And then she reached up over her left shoulder and pulled the katana from its sheath, careful not to touch any of the edge to her suit.

  * * *

  Fleet Admiral Nagara Krishnamurta looked back at the steaming jungle they had traversed, wondering how the woman out of time was doing. I hope she knows what she’s doing, he thought once again. True, she had those marvelous battlebots, well beyond anything his kingdom or the Nation of Humanity could field. And her battle armor was generations ahead of theirs. But she was also outnumbered almost a hundred to one, and quantity had a quality of its own.

  “There’s another cavern system ahead,” called out the voice of Lt. Commander Dasha Mandrake in his com link. They were taking advantage of some of Latham’s pizzos, floating in a cloud around them, to give them secure communications.

  “Good work, Commander,” said the Admiral, lo
oking over at one of the Maurid guides who was making sure the humans didn’t die in their jungle from inattention, or lack of knowledge. He wished they could take a more active role in ambushing the enemy, but bow, arrows and spears were not a match for modern weapons and armor. He still wasn’t sure what Pandora expected to do with that ancient looking sword of hers, but knowing her it had to be something spectacular.

  “Give the credit to the Latham woman’s microbots,” said the Commander. “I think they scoured the entire area, and found something even the guides didn’t know about. That tech is amazing.”

  The Admiral could hear in the Commander’s voice her envy of the advanced tech. Something he hoped they would someday develop, if they weren’t gifted with it first. But if Latham died they might find that well dry. He was sure the superman would not be happy if his lover was killed trying to help what to him was a nation of primitives.

  “Let’s get these people under cover, and quickly,” said the Admiral into the link. “Before something gives us away. And make sure we have human sentries covering all approaches. The robots are great, but I prefer having some organic eyes out there.”

  “Yes sir,” said the Commander in a tone of someone snapping to attention.

  I know I shouldn’t even bother telling her that, thought the Admiral with a smile. She’s a good officer, and doesn’t need micromanagement. But it makes me feel better, and that has to count for something.

  A moment later the Admiral was cursing under his breath as a Maurid led him around a clearing that looked ordinary as hell under his untrained eye, but one he had been about to traverse. And he wished yet again that he had never come to this orange hell.

  * * *

  Major Dronning Dumas looked down at the remains of the robot and whistled to himself. He had never seen such a lethal machine, kilo for kilo, in his life.

  “I lost twelve men taking this thing out,” said the Lieutenant platoon leader, kicking one of the six legs of the machine with an armored boot. “And a couple of wounded who just might make it.”

  “What did it hit you with?” asked the Major, glancing over at the line of bodies the platoon was gathering in the clearing.

  “Lasers, projectiles, a wicked little grenade. And then there was the particle beam. Like nothing I had ever seen.”

  “We have particle beams,” said the Major, looking at the snout of the weapon in question projecting from the head of the robot.

  “Not like these we don’t,” said the Lieutenant, shaking his head. “I used to work in R & D before taking a commission, and we have nothing near as powerful. This thing glowed an angry red, and sounded like a swarm of bees. An angry swarm. That takes some fierce kinetic energy from such a small weapon.”

  “Like the rifle the woman used before,” said the Major, thinking back on what he had seen in the recent past firefight. He looked back at the machine. “We need to get this back to the ship, so they can look at it and see what they can make of it.”

  “I’m betting that all the inner systems will be scrambled,” said the junior officer, hunching his shoulders in an attempt to relieve the stress of the moment. “If I were them I would have systems, nanosystems, that were made to destroy as much of the inner works as possible.”

  “We can still get an idea about how to build the things,” said the Major, sending a message by link to his commander, his new commander at the landing field, with a sitrep and a suggestion for the robots. “And we might get lucky and catch her as well.” Dumas knew he would not have to specify who she was. Everyone down here knew they were on a search and capture mission for the female of the pair from the Donut. Which brought both anticipation and fear.

  “We have her,” came a call over the link, and the Major started.

  “She’s captured?” he asked, looking at his HUD and seeing that the transmission came from a company commander to the right flank of the battalion.

  “Not yet, but we’ve got her trapped,” said the Captain over the link. “There’s no escape for you,” he said, his words coming over the link. “So why don’t you just drop that.” The words were interrupted by a gurgling scream, and there were shouts in the background, just before the link went dead.

  “You men, follow me,” yelled the Major, looking around the clearing.

  “What about the robots?” asked the junior officer.

  “They can wait,” said Dumas, unslinging his rifle and heading toward the position the signal had come from. “We have bigger game afoot.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  I have nothing against religion. But I take a stand against those fools who think their religion is the only version of the truth, and are willing to push it everyone else, by force if necessary. Those are the bastards I will always stand against. Pandora Latham.

  The trooper came crashing through the brush, rifle held at the ready, his eyes searching all the shadowed spaces for the target. The target found him first, the ultra-sharp blade slicing down, taking off the man’s forearms as it cut through the armor and weapon like they were made of jelly. The man screamed in agony, before the blade came back in and took his helmeted head from his shoulders.

  Pandora Latham was not a cruel woman. She cringed when she heard that scream of agony, agony that she had caused. She breathed a sigh of relief after she decapitated the man, putting him out of his misery. She didn’t mind killing if it was necessary, and she had determined a while back that many of the people of the Nation of Humanity needed killing. But pain was not her thing, giving or receiving.

  “She’s over here,” yelled someone else on the com link that she was tapping into. Another Marine came through the brush, pulling up in surprise when he found himself in front of the enemy he thought would be running away, trying to raise his rifle and get off a call at the same time, and not doing either very well.

  “I need he…” said the young man just before the katana was thrust through his stomach. She twisted the blade and pulled it out to the side, cutting through intestines, the inferior main artery, and a kidney. The man went down gasping out his life, bleeding out so fast he could hardly have felt the pain.

  Pandi ran away from the kill, using the still functioning servos of the suit to jump over some brush. She landed on the other side, her blade sweeping right and left and taking out the two Marines who didn’t have time to react to her strike. Rounds rattled off her suit, and a laser that missed torched the bushes behind her. She spun and took off, heading for the three men who were firing at her, straight for the laser gunner first as the most dangerous. The beam struck her suit, reflected away by its electromag field and the nanosurface of the armor, and Pandi waved her blade into the path as well. The almost magical sword absorbed the heat without transmitting it up the blade, and she closed the distance with the sound of striking rounds in her ears.

  She pulled the blade over her shoulder and down, slicing through the laser gunner and opening his suit like the shell of a crab, spilling blood and intestines onto the jungle floor. Pandi swiveled her hips and brought the blade around into the next trooper, while the third emptied his magazine into her helmet with no effect. The second trooper fell to the ground in two pieces, his torso sliced in half at an angle. She slid her feet in the dirt, realigned her body, and took the head of the third trooper.

  The katana was not really an easy weapon to master, but master it Pandora did, with constant practice using a lower tech weapon against robot opponents. She was feeling warmed up now, and knew she could keep this up for hours, as long as the enemy didn’t strike at one of her weak points. And so far they had shown no indication that they knew such existed.

  More shots hit her armor, including a couple of micro-grenades that did some real damage to her outer systems, knocking out camouflage and electromag generators. She spun in the air in a leap, hitting the ground running away from those firing at her, then dropping down behind a large tree, her audio sensors turned up full. The sounds of the pursuing troopers were clear to her ears, crashing th
rough the underbrush. At least one started screaming at something else, a scream that turned into a death rattle, and Pandi smiled as she thought of the jungle doing her job for her.

  The woman loped through some more brush, knocking away a vine that reached out and tried to punch a sharp tip through her suit. The vine came back and she sliced through it, ignoring it as the remainder retracted while the severed part fell twitching to the ground. And then she was through the brush and behind two more troopers caught looking the wrong way. One swing of the sword turned it into the last mistake they would ever make, and she faded back into the brush again.

  * * *

  “We hit her a bunch of times,” yelled the wide eyed Sergeant to the Major. “Full auto. And the rounds just bounced away.”

  “Lasers didn’t do any better,” said another trooper, slapping an angry hand on his light amp weapon. “Her armor is just too tough.”

  “Then we have to change the way we’re engaging her,” said the Major, looking at the body at his feet and grimacing. The weapon she had, which had been described as a sword, had sliced open the man from shoulder to crotch, right through the alloy and carbon fiber armor that should have stopped any kind of blade. The Major thought for a second, knowing that every moment lost could be another of his men dying. He looked over at the Sergeant at the same time that he sent a battalion wide message over his link. “Set weapons to single shot, maximum velocity. I know it reduces our chances of a hit, but high probability hits don’t seem to be doing anything at all. Maybe we can damage that suit enough for us to capture her.”

  “We should kill her ass,” said a nearby trooper, his gauntleted hands setting his weapon as ordered.

  “She is a valuable prisoner,” said Dumas, pointing at the Marine. “She is a lot more valuable to our cause than your sorry ass. And I will see that the man who kills her on purpose is taken before the Inquisition. Do I make myself clear?”