The Deep Dark Well

by Doug Dandridge

  She reconfigured the control panel and then danced her fingers across the board. The ship slipped quickly through the opening and into the vacuum. She linked with the ship’s computer and made sure all stealth systems were working.

  Hellfire she had named the ship, because that was what she and it were going to go through. Hellfire slipped smoothly into place a hundred meters below the hull of the station, as she accelerated along at a steady twenty gees, keeping close and tight. Nothing now but a ride, she thought. Then the real work would begin.

  Chapter 19

  Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biological state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole.

  William Burroughs, 1985

  The inner hull of the station passed above her, too fast for her to make out any but the largest of details. There were plenty of those. Hatches tens of kilometers wide, the large projections of the magnetic field generators, antennas of unknown purpose.

  So far so good. Nothing had attacked her so far, which had to be a good sign. Of course it wouldn’t strike at the bridge, as that would violate its programming. And of course there could be automated defenses, programmed long ago by sentient creatures without the restrictions on taking sentient life.

  “It’s time to start decel,” came Watcher’s voice over the com system.

  “OK,” she said. “Smooth and easy.”

  She could feel no difference in the orientation of the ship as it reversed its engines. Only the figures on the control board indicated that they were now slowing down at fifty gees. Kind of disconcerting for an old space hand, she thought. Her body was attuned to the motions of a ship like the Niven. Though acceleration might be small, you could at least tell which direction the thrust was in. This ship could be going a hundred gees on the wrong vector and she wouldn’t know for quite some time.

  Light flared out in space toward the hole. One of the drones that had been more successful than the others at avoiding the sweep of the computer. Of course the computer had to wait for confirming information to be certain it was destroying an unpiloted drone, and the drones were programmed to keep moving, not giving the computer the chance to gather intelligence on them.

  It had to know she was out here as well. Why else would the decoys have been launched, to fly on random vectors that led to nowhere, but to cover something up. That was the problem with any kind of military operation. It was always a tradeoff. There was never an absolutely successful tactic.

  Minutes passed as she drew closer to the first target, a section of the hull that sheltered one of the backup processors and memory cores. This would be the shortest jaunt, and the computer would then definitely know what they were up to. The others would take a longer flight time, as well as entail a greater risk. But it would be one less target to worry about, part of the total mission completed.

  “Powering up now,” said Watcher. The magnetic field generators switched on, the nearest fifty thousand kilometers to her front along the curve of the station. She looked down into it, shielding her eyes for a moment before the viewer adjusted to the light level. A line of electrons raced toward the hole, curving as the gravity swirl pulled them along. All of the magnetic field arrays were pulling the charged particles through the tidal swirl of the charged black hole, turning it into the most enormous electric dynamo ever conceived by sentient beings.

  Enough to open a wormhole, she thought, or several over a short period of time. Even as this thought entered her mind the gravimetric sensors picked up the disturbance to her front, at the time and place where planned. The hole opened schematically on her holo display, too far away to be seen. Not the smooth, mirror like surfaces of the wormholes she was familiar with, but a whirling maelstrom of chaos, leading down to the hell of the event horizon.

  She knew this was the second tunnel opened by Watcher. The first was dumping matter into the Schwarzschild radius, generating a storm of gamma radiation, uncharged neutron particles that would radiate into space like a hellish laser of monstrous proportions. The mouth to the second hole had expanded to scoop up these particles, restricting their passage to where Watcher and Pandi wanted them to go.

  Right into the station, in a five thousand kilometer radius of dispersal. Hard radiation, unaffected by charged particle shields, sleeting through the structure of the station, breaking down solid state and crystalline machinery. Within that radius mechanical equipment was ceasing to function on the molecular level. Even the omnipresent nanobots that quickly repaired all damage were being annihilated. Repair crews would have to come from without the zone, if in time at all.

  Ahead of her the wormhole closed. The ship had decelerated enough to pick out the medium sized details of the hull, as she rotated the vessel nose first to the station. The ship slid into place, engines on station keeping, holding above the optimal point for the assault.

  Her fingers triggered the controls, engaging the quadruple particle beams in the nose. Sentient control was needed to engage these weapons. A tenuous mass of negative matter was accelerated from the cannon, traveling at near light speed into the hull of the station. Where negative matter touched matter both canceled out without a trace. Not all the matter of this thick section of hull was negated, only one in ten atoms. But enough for the hull section to dissolve away in a spray of dust.

  Like a true disintegration beam, she thought. Thoughts of what had happened to Zukov came back to her mind. A deadly substance if there ever was one, capable of canceling the existence of matter as if it had never existed. Would it even leave a soul in its wake thought her Christian subconscious?

  Scanners showed the hole not quite fully penetrating the skin, so another burst of negative matter cleared the way. A hole big enough to admit her easily, she thought, as she unstrapped and headed for the airlock complex.

  The suit was fully assembled and waiting for her in its harness. She backed into the open array as the harness closed it around her quickly. She could feel it tighten around her as it sealed. The helmet lowered over her head, sealing quickly and easily at the neck. The breastplate swung into place across her chest, she snapped the buckles over the front, and she was fully ready for action in less than fifteen seconds. Not bad, she thought, as it had taken her over five minutes to get into her much smaller prospector’s suit.

  A quick check of the heads up display on the view plate showed that all systems were operational and fully charged. With a thought the suit lifted from the floor under repellers and slowly moved toward the airlock. The door closed behind her and the air was evacuated in an instant. The outer door opened, revealing the glory of open space.

  Pandi thrust the suit into the vacuum, turning the small spaceship as she exited the vessel. Light amplification sensors pulled the hull of the station into sharp definition as she maneuvered the suit toward it and added velocity, aiming directly toward the hole. A few last second adjustments and she was in.

  Her gazed moved to the side of the crystalline structure as she passed through. It looked like nothing she had ever seen, shimmering with the hard fields that helped to hold the structure together. So different from the outer surface it presented to the Universe.

  It took her a minute to pass through the thickness of the hull. Thicker than the heaviest warship. She had thought it might be wiser to attack through a regular hatch, where only a thin section would have needed to be penetrated. Watcher had thought otherwise. He felt that there still might be active defenses around a hatch. She had agreed it was not worth the risk.

  The suit bucked slightly as she left the hole and entered the interior of the station. A relay had been launched from the suit, she knew, to affix itself to the hull and allow her constant secure communication with her ship, and through her ship to Watcher. The map of this section of the interior was displayed on her visor. Two kilometers in would bring her to the detonator. Two kilometers as the laser flew. And the map showed no such direct route.

  Their plans
had taken this into account. A blast of negative matter took her through the thick bulkhead to her front. The other three walls were much thinner, and succumbed to small sprays of negative matter.

  “I’m in the corridor,” she reported to Watcher. The corridor that ran inward at an angle, and would give the quickest access to the detonator. She thrust along through the vacuum of the corridor, her eyes locked to the moving dot on the visor map.

  She stopped where indicated, a gauntleted hand pushing the access panel that opened the large floor hatch. The nearly empty room lay above, a scattering of boxes, crates and lockers doing little more than giving the room scale. She thrust through the room to the ceiling, a hundred and fifty meters closer to her goal. Checking her negative matter load brought a frown to her lips. She only had a quarter of a full load, and she would need that at the target.

  Pandi dropped back to the floor of the room, near a small cluster of metal crates. Her eyes appraised their cover, and she thought they would be satisfactory. Enough to bet my life on? She knelt behind the crates and switched the load on her particle beam. A wide spread of thinly arrayed particles. A squeeze of the trigger sent the particles toward the far wall. She ducked behind the crates an instant before antimatter contacted matter.

  Bright light flared in the room. The deck rumbled with the force of the blast. She could feel the vibrations of metal crates as thick pieces of bulkhead slammed into them. There was no other indication of the detonation in the vacuum of the chamber. Pandi checked the rad meter on the HUD. Not a huge dose, but she had taken some gamma rays. A two edged sword to be sure. She would let the medbot in the ship scrub her cells when this was all over.

  Looking over the crate she saw the ragged hole in the ceiling. More than big enough to allow her through. With that thought she was on her feet, lifting the suit on repellers and thrusting through up to the hole.

  She started as she cleared to the other side, wishing she had carried at least some other weapons with her. But the robots didn’t move. They were frozen in macabre aspects of motion, or lying frozen on the floor. But the thought remained with her. It would have taken too long to adjust her particle beam where it would have taken them out without the blast catching her as well. After all, it was still on the setting that had blown a more than human sized hole in a thick bulkhead.

  “Get a move on,” came Watcher’s voice over the com link. “I doubt the computer is just sitting around in confusion.”

  Pandi moved out, down another long hall, this one running below the corridor to the detonation control center. She shook her head in disgust at her behavior. Time was of the essence. The computer must be rushing forces here at the moment, and there was no telling when she would run into them.

  This was it, she thought, as she came to the last hatch. This would not open with the push of an access plate. Thick and armored with superstrong materials, even a full tank of negative matter wouldn’t get her through.

  The charges fit along the rim of the hatch just as planned. Everything seems to be going so well, she thought, a feeling of apprehension running through her. Too well. She backed along the corridor, keeping her eyes scanning the corridor. When she was far enough along she triggered the detonation. Antimatter charges blew the hatch out of its casing, into the room beyond.

  Pandi flew through the opening, a smile on her face as she saw the bulkhead beyond which the detonator lay. Many different symbols of danger were placed on that wall, all saying get away fool. Thirty meters of superhard materials separated her from the antimatter charge within. As she thought of the thousands of tons of volatile material beyond, even that thickness seemed paper-thin. And without the magnetic bottle holding it in place this thickness would be as paper. It was meant to keep the curious or malevolent out, not the destructive force in.

  Something hit her hard in the shoulder as she was staring at the wall. She careened across the room, hitting hard on the opposite wall, the suit cushioning the impact. She focused and rose just as the combat robot reached her, its hand swinging like a hammer at her helmet, flooring her in an instant.

  She rolled on the floor, not an easy task in the heavy suit, as she brought her rifle to bear. She was relieved to see it was one of the smaller, man sized units. One of the big monsters would have probably crushed her with its first blow, superhard armor notwithstanding.

  She thanked all the powers of the universe that she had taken the time to reset the rifle to a more staid configuration. The head of the robot exploded in a bright flash, as pieces of metal struck the suit with a clang.

  “You better watch it,” said Watcher over the link.

  “Has the computer already set its minions loose around here?”

  “No. That was a local defense robot, set here to guard the detonator ages ago. I can’t promise there won’t be more.”

  “OK,” she said as she set the rifle in place, clamping it to the proper angle of the wall. “I’m hurrying.”

  But not too much, she thought. She didn’t want to go up in the biggest explosion ever experienced by a twenty-first century human. She double-checked the rifle settings, making sure that the proper depth of penetration would be achieved. Timer set, she pulled the trigger and set the drill in motion.

  Her fingers flew as she disconnected the rifle from the clamps she had left in place. The ranging system on her helmet fed the figures of the hole back to her. Twenty-nine meters of perfect roundness. Without a trace of dust or other mess. She marveled again at the utility of negative matter. It would have come in handy many times in her trips through the Kuiper Belt.

  The two meter long rod penetrator slid neatly into the hole that had been made just to fit. The charge was secured by the rifle clamps she had left in place. A quick push of the button and the countdown began. Ten minutes, she thought, as she hurried out of the corridor. Plenty of time to get back to the ship and to a safe distance.

  She retraced her route in half the time it had taken her to penetrate. But then the route was completely open. Everything was going to plan, until she hit the first of the opposition.

  * * *

  Dammit, thought Watcher, as he checked the display again. A little more than five minutes to go, and her signal had gone like a fire in vacuum. Where the hell is she? A quick analysis of the signal over the relay gave him the answer. She was being jammed. Something had interrupted her journey, and there was no way he could get to her in time. The countdown went under five minutes, as he prayed to the gods he didn’t believe in that she could fight her way free.

  * * *

  Pandi was able to use antimatter while the robots approached, blowing several of them to pieces, the pieces taking out several more as fast moving shrapnel. When a piece flew by her helmet at a blur she decided they were too close and switched to negative matter. Enough for a few shots, she had to conserve her ammunition. The robots operated under no such constraints. They blazed away with accelerator rifles, rounds bouncing from her armor with heavy impacts.

  She squeezed her eyes shut as a round struck her faceplate, as if that would protect her vision if the round penetrated. All it did was allow a robot to get closer to her. Her eyes opened to see the creature aiming a rifle straight at her faceplate from close range. Her rifle came up even as she noted the small crack in the faceplate. A shot this close would probably finish the penetration, and open her to the vacuum beyond if not killing her outright.

  The robot stopped with the rifle aimed at her faceplate. For a quick second she wondered what was keeping it from finishing her. But it couldn’t kill her, could it. Disabling or capturing her might be by the rules, but the robot knew it would kill her with this shot, and was frozen into inaction.

  The shell of the robot, a utility model she noted, opened up as if a laser was cutting through it, as she brought the beam of negative matter up from its crotch to its head. She was back on her feet in an instant and around the robot, as rounds continued to bounce from her armor. They might not be able to kill me outright, s
he thought. But by delaying her they might accomplish the same thing.

  Her last three shots of antimatter cleared out three of the four robots still blocking her path. She boosted the suit into the last; knocking it into the wall as she continued beyond before it could recover enough to make a grab at her.

  The hole in the outer hull was just ahead. She tried to check the heads up display, but there was nothing. The shot to the faceplate had knocked out the HUD, and she had no means of checking the timer. Her fingers switched the weapon to antimatter as she turned to check her six. Robots by the dozens came after her, their rifles blazing away as they tried to disable her suit.

  Pandi ordered the suit to accelerate backwards through the hole as she opened up with the particle beam, hosing down the robots with furious fire that disintegrated them in place.

  “Pandi,” came the voice over the com link as she exited the station. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” she replied breathlessly, even as she jogged the suit to the side to avoid the blast coming through the hole. “How much time do I have?”

  “Thirty seconds. Move your ass.”

  “I won’t be able to get to the controls in time,” she cried as she thrust toward the ship. Both hatches were open before her, and she realized Watcher was using the wormhole link to remote the ship.

  “Just get in and grab on,” he said. “I’ll take it from there.”

  The hatches closed behind her as she entered the ship. She called up a holo display as the ship accelerated along the underside of the Donut, moving at emergency thrust away from the danger zone.

  The display switched back to the skin of the Donut, locking onto the area of interest to them all. The countdown clock sped along at the bottom of the holo as she watched. One switched to zero, and she gripped the wall handholds awaiting she knew not what.

  * * *

  The antimatter shape charge went off, matter and antimatter combining in a directional blast, pushing the superhard long rod penetrator inward, down the hole that contained it. Penetrator and the accompanying jet of superhot gases sliced through the last meter of material as if it wasn’t there. Through the material and the ceramic magnetic field coating beyond.