Deeper and Darker (Deep Dark Well Book 3)

by Doug Dandridge

  “Unlawful, according to whom?” asked the enemy Admiral with a sneer.

  “According to the laws of the Galactic Confederation,” said Krishnamurta in a cold voice. “Of whom I am a representative of.”

  “Never heard of you,” said the opposing officer, glaring into the holo. “And if you don’t piss off, I will destroy that little force of yours, and no one will hear from you ever again.”

  “You will be hearing a lot more from us in the future,” said Krishnamurta, his temper flaring. “And I am giving you one minute to cease your attack on that planet. Our probes are in close and locked on, and we have perfect firing solutions on each of your ships.”

  “I don’t believe that for a moment,” said the other Admiral. “You are still ten light minutes away. You.” A look of confusion came over the other man’s face, and Krishnamurta realized that the enemy officer had finally noticed that they weren’t communicating like two craft with a ten minute one way time lag.

  “Took him long enough,” said one of the bridge crew.

  Krishnamurta nodded his head. If this is the best they can do for flag officers, their Empire won’t be holding out against us very long.

  “They’re opening fire Admiral,” called out the Fleet Tactical Officer a moment before vector arrows appeared on the tac plot.

  “All ships,” called out the Admiral over the com. “Fire at will at all enemy ships. And make sure that nothing hits that planet.”

  That meant that they had to be careful of their targeting, not engaging anything that a miss of might hit the planet. Which still left them with plenty of targets.

  Thousands of vector arrows were now leaving the enemy force, grouping into several big close waves meant to swamp the Suryan defenses. The missiles were pulling four thousand gravities each, and would be coming in at a respectable velocity of about seventy thousand kilometers per second after a thirty minute flight. Hundreds of vector arrows were leaving the Confederation vessels at thirty thousand gravities, and would be coming in at well over a hundred and eighty thousand KPS, about point six light speed. The Admiral wished they had fired from a little further away, and would amend his strategy in the future. But they would still score many hits against the more primitive vessels than they would get in return.

  The first wave of Confederation missiles took out all of the Imperial battleships, including the flagship of the enemy commander, who called his surrender frantically at the last second. Too late, as his vessel added fifteen million tons of plasma and small debris to the surrounding space. Accompanying the battleships were all but four of the cruisers, and they only because a miss of them might have hit the planet. The second wave of missiles were launched before any of the Imperial missiles were on final approach, what few of them were left.

  Krishnamurta cursed as one of his destroyers sustained damage from a near miss, and then again when another took more significant damage. But that was all the harm he sustained, as the warships interlocked their defensive fire through the command and control offered by their wormhole com links. The second wave of his own missiles took out all the enemy cruisers and two thirds of the destroyers, leaving a mere nineteen of the tin cans. Those ships powered down their weapons and struck their colors in no time.

  “What are you going to do with their ships?” asked one of the aliens through a translation program.

  “The ships are yours,” said Krishnamurta after a moment’s thought. “We will help you to disarm the crews. Then, except for a few we will take along for information, the rest of them are yours to do with as you please.” And I wonder what form of punishment your people subscribe to?

  “We do not have a death penalty,” said the leader of the aliens, looking at the holo that showed his home world, clouds of particulate matter obscuring the surface, which was sure to have been scarred by kinetic strikes. “But these creatures can labor to help repair the damage they have done.”

  “Reconfigure their ships to suit you,” said the Admiral, pointing at the nearest enemy destroyer. “Use them to defend yourselves. And talk to your leaders about the possibility of joining our Confederation.”

  “And you will still go into the heart of this foul Empire to rescue your people?”

  “That is my mission.”

  “Then you are good friends to have, human, and terrible enemies. I think our leaders will agree to be your friends.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Dictators must have enemies. They must have internal enemies to justify their secret police and external enemies to justify their military forces.

  Richard Perle

  Pandora Latham watched the day’s proceedings on the trivee, tears of frustration in her eyes as she saw what her lover was subjected to. It’s so unfair, she thought, her fists balled up. He’s already paid for the crimes committed by his body, in guilt. And he was working to make amends to the Galaxy. But of course the Empire did not want to hear that. They had the monster they were looking for, and they were going to get all the mileage out of him they could.

  Pandi watched as they escorted him from the courtroom, wondering where he was being taken. Maybe I could stage a raid at that court, she thought, imagining her Marines and robots blasting into the building and getting Watcher out. There could be considerable collateral damage from such a raid. She doubted that these mind controlled people really deserved that, as angry as they made her. It really wasn’t their fault.

  And then there was the problem of getting her force away once she had him. Four hundred Marines would take some time to get through the wormhole. She wasn’t really all that worried about the combat robots. They could all be ordered to take to the sky and self-destruct. If it comes down to it, and there’s no other way, I’ll raid that court room like it’s nest of bootleggers. As sure as I’m alive, I will. But with that determination, came the counter that she would not do that unless she had to.

  Pandi sent a command through her implant, then moved to an apartment window to push it open.

  ‘What are you doing?” asked Katherine Ramirez, whose apartment Pandi was staying for this night.

  “I’ve got a delivery coming,” she told the woman, looking out on the street below that still thronged with people.

  “From who?” asked the alarmed woman. “We didn’t say you could bring anyone here.”

  “And I’m not bringing anyone here,” said Pandi with a smile. “Or at least no one living.”

  “What are you talking about,” said the Opposition Member. Her words trailed off as a small object flew in through the window and a silvery surface expanded from the probe.

  “Are you OK, ma’am?” asked Mandrake over the com. “We have been watching the proceedings up here, and we’re very concerned.”

  “Everything’s fine, Dasha,” said Pandi. “I’m still trying to locate where they are keeping him. If I don’t find him in the next couple of days, I may have need of all the Marines for a raid of the courtroom. So get them ready, and prep a couple of more probes for insertion.”

  “I hope it doesn’t come to that, Ma’am,” said the Captain. “But if it does, we will be ready.”

  “In the meantime, this is what I need right now.”

  A little over a minute later bags of equipment came through the portal, flying out and plopping to the floor. After the fifth bag the wormhole shrank, followed by the probe going back out the window and flying to another place of concealment, this one closer to Pandi’s current location.

  “Was, that a wormhole?” asked a wide eyed Ramirez, staring at the window as if it were something wondrous itself. “Where does it lead? Back to the station of legend?”

  “Hate to disappoint you,” said Pandi, zipping open the first bag and grunting in satisfaction over the contents. “That one goes back to my flagship.”

  She started pulling out the contents of the bags and strapping equipment on her body, starting with a tight fitting undergarment, then belts and pouches over it.

  “What is all that?”
asked Ramirez, a frown on her face.

  “The best recon gear the old Empire developed,” said Pandi, strapping on a holster, then pushing a weapon into it.

  “And just what in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Going on recon,” said Pandi, putting the helmet on her head and strapping it tight, then lowering the visor.

  “You’re not supposed to leave here,” said the woman, raising her voice.

  “That’s for me to say,” said Pandi, moving to the window.

  “What’s going on here,” growled Jorge, running into the room.

  “I’m going out and look around,” said Pandi, engaging the stealth field on the suit and starting to climb out the window.

  “We have orders to keep you here,” yelled Jorge, running for her and sweeping his hands through the now empty window area.

  And I’m not subject to your orders, Jorgi, thought Pandi as she floated off into the night.

  The equipment she wore was the best spying and espionage ensemble of the ancient, technologically superior, age. She was invisible to all sensors, even infrared, thanks to the heat sink that fed through the wormhole in her suit. Watcher had related the story to her one time about the difficulties people had with sending one wormhole through another. Difficulties as in big hawking explosions that destroyed entire spaceships. They had finally solved the problem, after over a century of trial and error experimentation. Now a mishap would just cause both wormholes to blink out of existence, and was a rare occurrence to boot. So she was completely invisible, with a field that would bend all electromagnetic radiation around her, while all of her heat was sent to regions beyond the scope of any sensors.

  Antigrav units allowed her to fly, from centimeters above the ground to outside of the atmosphere, something she was not really prepared for. Antigrav was not as powerful a propulsion system as grabbers, and also generated a much smaller heat signature. Of course, that heat was also fed through the wormhole. The wormhole also gave her communications with her ship and its computer systems. While the visor on her helmet gave her a complete active and passive sensor suite, though the active was powered down at this time.

  She spent a moment hovering in the air over the street, watching the people interact as they moved along, shopping and heading home before the curfew that came down like a steel curtain a couple of hours before midnight. In fact, there were quite a few people out walking, trying to get in what socializing they could before being confined to the housing of theirs or others. She noted there were a lot of men in black uniforms, with the sword in fist symbol of the Empire. The uniformed police of the Empire, and in a greater density than she had ever seen.

  Prior to going into space, Pandi had visited some of the Police State cities of her home planet. Chicago, New York, Beijing, cities so crowded and crime ridden that a strong armed presence was needed on the streets. Or at least so the governments thought.

  All of the uniformed police carried powered up stunners, which gave off an electronic signature that was like a beacon on her passive sensor suite. The other holster carried a weapon that gave off no signal, obvious projectile weapons that didn’t power up until ready. She noticed that there were also people, men, walking along in civilian clothing, with the same electronic signature as the stunners carried by the uniformed men. As one of them nodded at a uniformed cop she knew she was looking at the secret police.

  Are they always this thick on the ground? thought the woman, floating like an invisible spirit above them. Or is this the result of someone killing two of them, and rescuing one of their citizens while they were busy cracking down on the curfew?

  Pandora shook her head at the disgusting display of totalitarianism, then moved up into the air to get a better look at the city. She stopped at a thousand meters up, which gave her a high flying bird’s eye view of the metropolis. It stretched out like a checkerboard of streets going on for scores of kilometers in all directions. Everything was well lit, lights shining from the windows of buildings from megascrapers down to single story dwellings. The lights of aircars moved through the skies, public vehicles and the cars of the wealthy flooding the lanes.

  “Warning,” yelled the voice of the suit comp in her ears. She turned just in time to see an oncoming aircar, picked up by her passive sensors of its own navigational radar. She boosted down, her augmented reflexes allowing her to react ten times faster than she had before the improvements. Still, the car, while not hitting her dead center, clipped her and sent her plummeting toward the ground. The section of the suit that was hit went rigid as its fabric converted to impact armor. The invisibility field died on that section, and the passenger of the car, which had hit her because it couldn’t detect her, looked out of his window to see a small object, what part could be seen, falling away.

  “Shit,” said Pandi as she fought her way out of the tumble that was making it impossible to control her altitude. She lost five hundred meters before she gained control and stopped the fall. You need to stay out of the traffic patterns, idiot, she told herself, rising up a hundred meters and keeping a close watch for aircars. After a couple of moments she found some space free of the cars, just above the top of a building whose flashing strobe warned them away.

  Pandi studied the city, the information she had downloaded from the local net meshing with her comp system. She found and tagged the secret police stations, the regular precinct stations, of which there were many, military barracks, com relay centers. Also the other free standing jails and prisons serving a city of fifteen million people with a huge number of enforceable codes. And probably an incarcerated population of one hundred thousand, mostly those locked up to undergo reindoctrination. Next she found the government offices, including the Imperial Palace and the Parliamentary offices and main building. And finally the courthouse where the trial was taking place, the building of interest.

  If I don’t locate the right prison, then we’ll have to assault that bastard during the trial. She wasn’t sure how long the trial would run. Tony thought it would go at least a week, so the public could be exposed to just how evil Watcher was, and what a wonderful thing their government was doing to bring him to justice. I hope he’s right, because I really don’t want to have to hit this courthouse, with two barracks and seven police garrisons within five kilometers. Not that I don’t think we can take it, but the collateral damage could be terrible. If’n we can even get him out without his being killed, since he won’t have armor on at the start of the assault.

  Pandi moved her suit down to a couple hundred meters above the streets and made her way toward the courthouse. Along the way she saw some soldiers, if they weren’t policemen, also moving through the sky. They were sweeping the region to their front with radar, for what purpose Pandi couldn’t say, since there was nothing visible in the air that was not on their side. Unless they're looking for me, she thought, following the radar beams on her HUD. Her suit was picking up the bleed from the beams, and the HUD indicated that her equipment was absorbing over ninety nine percent of the energy from the radar. An overlay showed where it might be possible for a radar beam to pick her up, which, according to the inverse square law, was only about five meters. At least as far as she could guess the enemy capabilities.

  She moved up twenty meters to avoid a couple of fliers that were heading in her direction, then back down, continuing on her way toward the courthouse, which sat in a large square of parks and fountains. That area looked pretty, but also served another purpose. It gave anyone defending the courthouse great fields of fire, and observation of any group that might try to get to the building. She picked up a number of radar and laser sensor beams crossing the square, and sweeping the space above it.

  This is going to be a bitch trying to get in without anyone seeing us, she thought, moving over the building, watching the readouts of beam strength and feeding the patterns into her on-board comp. Her com uploaded the information to the ship above, where it would be analyzed by her Marine tactical team. Of
course, things will be a little different during the daytime, when there are people crowding this square. Bound to be more police, and possibly soldiers, here. And more sensor beams. She shook her head at that. There would probably be more human surveillance, but less in the way of automated systems that might be tripped off by the numbers of people moving through here.

  She next moved around the building, checking out the doors entering the main lobby area, and all of the side entrances. The side entrance doors, including a couple of loading bays, were of much more robust construction that those of the main, which were made more for decorative purposes than security. It was obvious that the main entrance was defended by electronics and human security. And when the courtroom was open, those doors would also be unlocked, though guarded, and probably heavily.

  Pandi spent the next hour looking around, planning where her forces would enter the square, their path into the building. She still hoped it didn’t come to this, but unless they found out where Watcher was being kept at night, there would be nothing else for it but to strike during the day.

  A beam of radar swept across her position, and she cringed for a moment as the signal bounce went over the threshold, for a moment. She moved out of the beam, worrying for a moment that she might set the alarms off. She continued to move away from the square, wondering if there was a silent alarm. Some of the fliers were now moving this way, and she looked up to see a patrol aircar coming on.

  I better get out of here, she thought, boosting into the air, reaching two thousand meters and looping a hundred and eighty degrees before moving away in the opposite direction from her original approach. She looked back to see the fliers moving past each other while shouting out something, while the aircar curved around the building and went back the way it had come. I’m guessing I didn’t set anything off, she thought as she moved back over the city and continued her surveillance for another couple of hours.