The Deep Dark Well

by Doug Dandridge

  "He, I mean Vengeance, ordered the destruction of the two ships?" asked Watcher. Pandi smiled at him. He was still trying to use the name of his nemesis in normal conversation, dedemonizing him so to speak.

  "Vengeance ordered the destruction of the two vessels, though he had tried to bring all of the squadron closer."

  "So now we have a bunch of pissed off intruders sitting out there," said Pandi. "Pissed off intruders in warships."

  "I don’t think they could cause appreciable damage to the Donut," stated Watcher. "After all, the structure is made of superhard materials, beyond the technology of those out there to reproduce."

  "They could get lucky."

  "The female known as Pandi is correct," said the computer. "They possess both negative matter and antimatter. Both are capable of destroying the superhard materials of the station shell."

  "And Vengeance’s final orders?"

  "He ordered that the ships were not allowed to come beyond the two billion kilometer deadline," said the computer. "Or I was to use the graviton beams on any that dared to probe past it."

  "I verify those orders," said Watcher. "But only one ship at a time. If the rest back off from another demonstration they are to be allowed to get away."

  How different they both are, thought Pandi. Oh, Watcher would kill if needed, and would kill gladly to protect himself. In fact he had admitted as much to her. She was the first intruder in over a millennium that he had allowed on the station without killing. But, unlike Vengeance, he would only use the force necessary to keep intruders away. It was like they were figures of light and shadow. Good and evil personified, each the incarnation of one of the primal forces. Yet they were brothers.

  "Now I would like access to all of the records of the Watcher Project to be opened for the perusal of my guest," he ordered. "Pandi is to research my past, and I want all information that she asks for to be released to her."

  "All records, Watcher?" said the computer. "Are you sure you want her to learn everything about you? She might discover some weaknesses you don’t want revealed."

  "Everything," ordered Watcher. "I’m only interested in one weakness at this time. And she might be able to help me correct that flaw."

  "As you wish. You may access the information at any of my terminals mistress."

  "This terminal will be fine," she said.

  "Do you wish for me to upgrade your implant?"

  "Don’t you dare," she hissed. "I have all the implant I desire."

  "Follow her orders implicitly," ordered Watcher. "As if they came from me."

  "OK," said Pandi, taking a seat in front of the holo, "let’s start with the start. Show me the records on the inception of the Watcher Project."

  * * *

  Worried men and women gathered in the conference room aboard the flagship Orca. Admiral Miklas Gerasi looked over his staff members. The too sharp images of holos indicated those who were attending by electronic proxy, the captains and chief tactical officers of his other vessels. He was not fool enough to require their physical presence while in the middle of hostile territory. Their executive officers were required to attend, along with the flag staff.

  The central holo over the table showed yet another probe being fired over the deadline. Readouts indicated distance to the deadline, running down quickly as the probe, encased in the body of a standard long-range torpedo, accelerated at thousands of gees toward its target, the great black hole at the center of the system.

  "Zero," said Commander Zaglas, the XO of the Cachalot. The torpedo flared with bright light as it disappeared into the sudden point source of gravity, then exploded outward in a brighter flare as the compressed matter was released.

  "That was one we had already pinpointed," said the Chief Tactical Officer, Commander Lemisa.

  "So now they have all fired at a probe at least three times," stated Gerasi. "We can be relatively sure they are not hiding anything."

  "That would be my analysis, sir," said Lemisa. "Six of the bastards, all evenly spaced in orbit a hundred million kilometers out from the Donut."

  "Unless they have some more of them, hidden among all the other stuff in orbit," said Captain Valari Midas of the Orca.

  "Do we know what those other objects are yet?" asked the admiral.

  "Yes sir," said Lemisa. "Over a hundred of them are wormhole gates, deactivated, damn the luck."

  "You mean those big square things?" asked one of the holo captains. "The things twelve kilometers on a side?"

  "Yes sir," answered the chief tactical officer. "Ship gates, for the passage of large vessels between the stars, instantaneously."

  "And the smaller stations?" asked Midas.

  "You mean smaller in relation to the Donut?" said Lemisa. The people around the table chuckled for a moment. The so called smaller stations. Fifty-eight kilometers in length, were larger than the huge space habitats back at the home worlds, and there were over a hundred of them in orbit around the Donut.

  "Those appear to be orbiting space docks, to handle the freight traffic that used to pass through this system."

  "Freight traffic like this," continued the chief tactical officer, as the view in the holo switched, showing a station with a group of long vessels attached by the noses to its many docking arms. Readouts below the ships gave the scale for those who couldn’t judge such easily. For those who could, the relationship of ships to station was enough.

  "Sixteen kilometers!" said one of the captains. The Orca and her sisters were only 574 meters in length, the most massive interstellar capable objects created by their civilization.

  "And then we have this," said Lemasi, the view moving out from the station, bringing another vessel very similar to the others into sight. Similar until one noticed the differences in scale between it and the ships at the nearby station.

  "This ship measures over twenty eight kilometers from stem to stern," said Lemasi. "It could carry our entire fleet within its hold with room to spare.

  "It seems that these vessels were not interstellar capable," continued Lemasi, his laser illuminator pointing to the long boom that attached the globe of an inertialess drive to the wide body of the ship. "The wormhole gates were the obvious means of moving these vessels from system to system."

  "But we can be sure that this inertialess drive," said Admiral Gerasi, "is magnitudes in advance of anything we have. What would you guess, Lemasi? A hundred? A thousand gees acceleration?"

  "Most probably," said the tactical officer. "But even that pales compared to these."

  The holo view changed yet again, to show another group of vessels in orbit around the station. These vessels were also large, though much less so than the previous. Booms attached inertialess drive globes to these ships as well, but the pylons of interstellar drives flew from wings on the sides of the vessels. Most of the vessels sported large cargo doors on the bows, similar to the interplanetary ships examined earlier. But some, leaner than the others, had banks of tubes and projector arcs bow and stern. Warships, they all knew, the largest over six kilometers in length.

  "These would be the real prize," said the chief tactical officer. "With the weapons technology we are sure to find on these ships we would be more than a match for any of our enemies."

  "Do you think they are manned and active?" asked one of the worried captains. "I mean, it’s enough to have to face the automated weapons systems of the Donut, much less a fleet of superior warships."

  "I can safely say they are not functional, nor manned," said Lemasi, switching the holo view to a close-up of one of the warships. "You can see for yourself the obvious beam scaring and hull ruptures of this vessel. The others have similar damage, as if they were all attacked and knocked out before they had a chance to clear for action."

  "The legendary fall of civilization," said Gerasi. "No one knows how it came about. Or who were the precipitators."

  "No one that we know of," said Lemasi. "Perhaps the answers lie on that station."

  "OK," said
the admiral. "I think we should go ahead with a saturation attack. Test their defenses."

  "Do you want to use the specials?" asked Lemasi.

  "No," replied the admiral. "They haven’t been tested this close to a major gravity well. Especially one as deep as that one. We'll wait until the time seems right.

  "No. All ships will launch a simultaneous volley of standard torpedoes, at maximum acceleration. Wide range beam attacks as well. Even though they can’t do much damage, they will arrive before they are detected, and might just burn out some of those infernal devices’ sensor arrays."

  "You really don’t think the torpedoes will do much damage to the graviton generators?" asked Captain Midas.

  "Maybe enough to put a couple out of action," said the admiral. "Hell, I don’t really think any of them will get through, but it will give us more information about their defenses. I’m afraid we’ll have to take a risk I didn’t want to take. But we’ll talk about that after we’ve exhausted all other possibilities."

  * * *

  Sometimes the computer was amazingly fast at bringing up the requested information, just what she would have imagined in such a technically sophisticated machine. At other times it seemed to crawl, but then that was to be expected when some requests required a thorough search of the 8,000 cubic kilometers of memory core.

  What she had found so far was fascinating. And having an implant in her head, connecting her directly to the computer, made understanding even the most difficult of concepts relatively easy. Not having the complete system, such as Watcher, made taking in all the information slower. He would have accomplished her task in a fraction of the time. But the computer only had the most rudimentary of connections into her language and visual centers. So holo input, the old fashioned way, through the eyes, was still necessary.

  Watcher had not been a creation that had sprung directly from the minds of his creators. No, he had been the culmination of hundreds of years of trial and error. The attempt had been to create homo superior, a new form of human being, who would be superior to all other forms of intelligent life.

  The basic problem had occurred when mankind had expanded out into the Galaxy and found other forms of intelligent life. The human race had always thought of itself as the highest form of life going. It was a sobering experience to find equals among the stars.

  Oh, the human race was more intelligent than some other species, faster than others, stronger than a few more. But all things equaled out. This race had better memory, that faster processing speed, another a greater visual system. Maurids could run faster and were better armed with natural weapons. Husteds could jump higher and were physically stronger than humans. The list of aliens, hundreds of species in all, went on, as did their attributes. And the balance was maintained.

  The politicians gave lip service to the community of sentient beings. The do gooders of the species really believed it. But the majority of the race still wanted to believe they were superior to all other forms of life. And in the human race majority rules. So something had to be done. Genocide, with the horrors of endless war that it would entail? The human race would not stand for such.

  So another solution had to be found. And making a superhuman, one superior in every attribute the aliens might possess, one that would take the place of present humans over a period of time, was that solution.

  Pandi felt sick at the sight of some of the early experiments. Genetic engineering had been a neglected science, as far as use on humans was concerned, for thousands of years. So the first improvements had been true monsters. She shuttled through those images quickly, arriving at some of the earlier successes. These appeared physically normal, with better developed brains than regular homo sapiens. But they were not normal.

  Psychopaths. They had been psychopathic, without the normal emotions of a human being. All effort had been placed into increasing the density of their brain’s neuron system, with less attention to the endocrine and glandular systems. These beings had been cold computing machines. And many had become the perfect killers. Great for the military and special applications. Not so great for replacing the human race. And they hadn’t even turned out to be very good soldiers. Psychopaths had no concern for their comrades, no pride in the regiment. They were only in it for themselves.

  Next had come the experiments with ESP. Telepathy, telekinesis, pyrokinesis. These had turned out to be dead ends, as the genetic basis of these traits was never found, and it was never proven that those who claimed to possess them really did.

  Pandi’s head began to hurt again. She had been at this for hours. Hours of concentrated thought, of viewing thousands of images, hundreds of pages of text. Even with the computer handling much of the load it was a tiring task.

  "Time to take a break," she told the computer. "Where is Watcher?"

  "Watcher is in his quarters, viewing the fleet of intruders."

  His quarters are just down the hall, she thought, as she walked through the door that swished open at her approach. This entire complex of the station, once the station governor’s quarters, was his secured area. A couple of quick steps and his door opened before her. As she walked in she saw him across the great room, looking at almost a dozen small vessels on the holo. Small is relative, she thought, realizing that the ships were probably larger than anything she was familiar with. They were just scaled that way to all fit on the screen.

  "I’m worried about these boys," he said as she entered the room. "I’ve gone over the records of how Vengeance dealt with the two they sent forward, and I can’t understand why they are still there."

  "Have they done anything besides sit there?"

  "They’ve probed us, with all kinds of sensor arrays. And they’ve sent several torpedo probes in, which the defense systems have destroyed."

  "Can you watch them in real time no matter where they are?" she asked, sitting down next to him on the side of the couch that faced the holo.

  "Only if I can open a wormhole nearby," he replied. "I can’t break the laws of time and space, and light is the limit of speed in normal space. Luckily they are all where they were expected to be."

  "What if they weren’t where they were expected to be? What if they appeared out of whatever space their drives pulled them through at faster than light?"

  "It’s not truly faster than light," he said with a smile.

  "I know that," she said with a huff. "I’m not a child. But it does the same thing. So what if they appeared out of whatever space they were in, within your defensive perimeter."

  "I do not think they would be so foolish to try and use their space destroying drive this close to a gravity well like the hole we orbit. That kind of drive does not have the control needed for close maneuvering. The most likely outcome would be their destruction."

  "They’re human, Watcher. Your recording of Vengeance shows they are. So don’t ever underestimate their capacity for foolishness."

  Watcher threw his head back and roared with laughter, tears flowing from his eyes.

  "Of course you are right," he said through his gasps of laughter. "Humans are the most foolish of creatures. And I am one of them. Better in many ways, but still not perfect."

  "So what if they appeared within your perimeter? How would you find them?"

  "The old-fashioned way, I guess," he said. "I would have to wait until they appeared on my sensor scans."

  "At the speed of light, right," she said. "You would have to wait through real time for the signals to return from your sensor sweeps. Which could take an hour or more, round trip."

  "True," he said. "They would be beyond my reach for as long as they were invisible to me. Though the systems closest to them are instructed to handle situations such as this."

  "Uh oh," said Pandi, looking close at the holo. "It looks like they’re up to something."

  * * *

  "On my command, volley fire. Fire!"

  At the word from Gerasi’s lips the Orca fired all tubes at the far target of a graviton pro
jector. His signal also released the torpedoes from the other ships of the squadron. A dozen tubes to the ship, 132 torpedoes rocketing from the magnetic accelerators that imparted their initial velocity. A minute passed, then another volley was fired. Another minute, another volley, and 396 torpedoes were on the way.

  "That leaves us with one complete tube load on each ship but this one," said Lemasi, the chief tactical officer, from his station in the squadron war room.

  "Enough for a good spread if we get into trouble," said Captain Midas.

  "But not enough if we engage in a protracted battle," said the admiral, echoing the unspoken thoughts of all. It was a risk, but risks needed to be taken, and this would likely prove the extent of the enemy defenses.

  The torpedoes accelerated inwards at a thousand gees, building up incredible velocity quickly. They began to veer onto independent courses as they approached the deadline, spreading out, zig zagging, dumping small packets of decoys. Here a torpedo flared as one of the graviton beams caught it in flight. There another zigged at just the right moment. The waiting ships began to pick up point sources of heavy gravity from the misses.

  "They are only hitting on one in twenty of their shots," said the science officer, following the computer graph of the defensive fire.

  Another torpedo flared, then another. The pattern spread out even more, as the torpedoes pitted the random patterns picked by their small computer brains against the technology of the Donut.

  "Yes," said Gerasi. "But the system is still scoring hits. And we can’t bring the ships through with the same kind of acceleration. Or maneuverability."

  Within minutes a hundred torpedoes had been destroyed. The rest continued on, switching vectors, while the computers aboard Orca analyzed the patterns of the torpedoes flights, searching for the most efficient ones to avoid the defensive system.

  It took the system five minutes to destroy the next hundred torpedoes. It took ten minutes to destroy the next hundred. It picked off a dozen more, then stopped, as the remaining torpedoes, eighty in all, continued on into the system.