Deeper and Darker (Deep Dark Well Book 3)

by Doug Dandridge

  Then she had stood on the roof of a taller building and watched as several airbuses were raised to the roof and took off. Dozens of aerial troop carriers circled overhead, while even more ground attack ships moved over them. Higher up streak the contrails of atmospheric fliers moved on several paths.

  It looked like an impossible task, trying to free Watcher on the way to the courthouse. Not that she couldn’t bring down enough force on them to beat this security force. The question was, would Watcher, in one of those airbuses, survive the assault. That was something that she couldn’t risk. She had to depend on Watcher to act in his own defense while the rescue was going on. And sitting in chains, which she had to assume he would be, while in the back of an airbus, was not a position that allowed much in the way of action.

  She followed them with her eyes as the convoy moved away, the airbuses shifting position as they flew, the entire group heading first to the north, then changing direction, still not on a straight line course to the courthouse. And they’ll probably change their path every day, she thought, wondering if that was for her, if they knew she was here, or just a general precaution when transporting high profile prisoners.

  She took to the sky as the sun seemed to move around the side of the gas giant. There seemed to be an unusual number of aircars up this morning, most of them moving on what looked like patrols. She looked down at the streets below, and was even more surprised to see soldiers moving along them in squad formations, while others set up checkpoints, and police and other troops walked into buildings. People were being stopped and searched, most passed on, others segregated for further questioning.

  This doesn’t look good, she thought as she flew back to the apartment building, continually scanning the ground. The air was filled with the energies of radar and sonics, looking for anything in the air that might be moving. Radar was no problem. Her suit could absorb that energy. Even beams of light could be deflected from her suit, bent around by the electromagnetic field and aimed at the receiving set, completing the circuit. Sonics were more of a problem. They were also beams that went from projector to receiver, and anything that got in their way set off the alarm at the receiving set. There was nothing on her suit that could retransmit those beams, which were switching frequencies every second. Fortunately, her auditory sensors could pick up the hums of the beams, and give her a good idea of where they were. Still, it forced her on a weaving path between buildings, constantly changing her altitude to avoid the beams that were projected between those structures.

  It didn’t look any better when she got back to the building she was staying at. The streets for blocks around were filled with an even denser pack of police and military. What the hell have I done? she thought, realizing that she had to be the cause of this. She had killed one of the secret policeman, without thinking about how he might also be tracked by his own people, that they might know where he had been when he disappeared. Then again, she couldn’t let him go after seeing a door open by itself. Maybe I could have, she thought, blaming herself for this situation. It just would have been a door opening, falling open because it wasn’t locked, then closing with the wind. The cop might not have been bright enough to figure that there was no wind. He would have approached the door, found nothing, closed it, and walked away with a head shake.

  She knew there was no way to get into the building without chancing some suspicion. The door was not open, and if she opened it the action would be seen. There were no open windows, and opening one would be sure to attract attention. So what the hell do I do now, she thought. Wait for the police to leave? That might take some time, possibly more than a day.

  The front door opened and a uniformed cop came walking out, followed by what must have been a secret policeman. And then, to her horror, Garcia came out of the building, his hands restrained behind his back, and another uniformed cop with his hand on the Opposition Leader’s shoulder. Following him were Ramirez and Hernandez, also in restraints, pushed along by more police. They were led to an airbus with police markings that was sitting in the middle of the street. After they were placed in the van it leapt into the air, rose above the buildings, and curve around in the direction of the nearest police station, highlighted on the map on her HUD.

  I better follow, she thought, shooting into the air and catching up with the van. She didn’t know what she was going to do, but finding out where they were being taken was a good first step.

  * * *

  “Open the damned door,” yelled the voice over the pounding. “This is the police. Open the door or we’ll break the damned thing down.”

  Tony looked in panic at the door, then turned to look at Jorge when he heard the sound of a chemically powered pistol round being jacked into its chamber.

  “Put that damned thing away,” he hissed at the man. The gun was highly illegal, and sure to get them all arrested if it was found. And he couldn’t delay opening the door much longer, or the police would break through the door, and possibly start a gunfight that Tony and his people couldn’t win.

  Jorge, white faced, acted like he wanted to hide the pistol, but couldn’t think of a place.

  “Here,” said Katherine, reaching for the gun, “give it here.” She grabbed the gun and ran into another room. A couple of moments later she was back, nodding her head. The door was shaking, then splintered as the people in the hall slammed a ram into it.

  “Hold on,” said Katherine, who was the renter of the apartment. She ran to the door and shot the dead bolt open.

  The door flew open hard enough to hit the wall, and three policemen, two uniformed, one in plain clothes, pushed into the apartment, guns in hand.

  “Why did you take so long to answer?” asked the plain clothes man, standing in front of the woman while the two uniforms moved into the apartment.

  “I was sleeping,” said Katherine.

  Garcia almost cringed at her reply. It was morning, all of them were dressed, and no one was going to believe such a lame answer.

  “Identification, please,” said the Secret Policeman, holding out a scanner.

  Katherine held out her right hand and the cop ran the scanner over it. He grunted as he looked at the screen. “Katherine Ramirez? And this is your apartment?”

  The woman nodded, and Tony wondered why they were even bothering to ask. The scanner gave the cop that information. But it was all part of procedure, and meant to trip people up when they weren’t thinking clearly.

  “Hey,” said Katherine ,as the sounds of the other cops tearing apart one of the bedrooms came to them. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “A secret policeman who was on duty in this neighborhood was killed last night,” said the Secret Cop, giving Katherine a cold glance. “We are searching for the perp. Do you have any idea what might have happened?”

  Tony stared at the man in shock. What the hell did that damned woman go and do? he thought. It had to be the Latham woman. There was no other explanation. No local would kill a cop, not unless they were able to get that cop in isolation, and then they would make damned sure that the body wasn’t found. She had said she had come to help them, but had so far caused nothing but trouble.

  “I know nothing of any killing,” said Katherine, shaking her head.

  “And who are you?” the cop asked Tony, motioning for him to make his hand available.

  “Tony Garcia,” said the Engineer, reaching his hand out. “I am a friend of Katherine’s, staying the night here.”

  “You are far from your home, Mr. Garcia,” said the cop with a cold smile. “Why did you stay here last night?”

  “Me and Jorge are friends, and I was spending some time with them. Had much to drink, and missed curfew, so I stayed the night.”

  “And you,” said the man to Jorge, holding out the scanner again.

  “I’m Jorge Hernandez. Katherine’s boyfriend. And I often spend the night here.”

  “Find anything?” asked the secret cop as one of the uniformed men stuck his head back in t
he room.

  “Nothing yet,” said the man. “I’m going to scan the other bedroom now.”

  Garcia did not like the sound of that. Latham had spent considerable time in that room, and there was sure to be skin cells, hair, something from her, in that room.

  “So, none of you have any knowledge of what might have happened to our man? Nobody we have talked to so far in this building seems to know anything. Yet our man was patrolling this area last night, and he would not have left his post unless something unusual had happened.”

  The Secret Cop walked to the window and looked out on the street. He turned back and pointed a finger at Tony. “And I have to assume that you are loyal citizens of the Empire?” He looked at the screen attached to the scanner that made it a multipurpose data access tool. “According to our records, the three of you have all reported to regular indoctrination sessions. That has to mean that you are good citizens, doesn’t it?” The man looked away for a moment, then back at Garcia, again pointing his finger at Tony’s face. “Unless you three are immune,” he said in a voice filled with hate and anger.

  “Sir,” said the cop who had gone into the spare bedroom to scan it. “I’ve picked up genetic traces of someone else in the other room.”

  “Well, who is it?” growled the Secret Policeman, looking over at the uniformed cop.

  “No one in our database,” said the other cop.

  “A stranger?” asked the lead cop, his eyes narrowing. “A stranger. An outsider.” He looked back at Tony. “And just who the hell were you harboring? Obviously someone from outside the Empire.” The cop walked up to Garcia and grabbed his shirt, pulling him forward and pushing his pistol under the man’s chin. “Who was she?”

  Tony closed his eyes, prepared to die before he gave up any information to this man. The cop pulled his pistol away and shoved Garcia in the chest. “You are all under arrest,” he yelled. “Maybe we can get you to answer some questions in an interrogation chamber. Even the immune can be broken in one of those.”

  Tony didn’t even have to ask what the charges were. On Kallis, one could be arrested and held indefinitely with no charges at all. And there was circumstantial evidence that they had committed treason, which was enough for charges to be leveled.

  “Cuff them,” he ordered the other two cops. “We’ll see how much they like the accommodations in the pit.”

  Tony was walked downstairs by one of the cops, his two compatriots behind him all the way. Why the hell did she have to come? he thought. Why the hell did Nathan have to tell her about me? We have gained nothing, and lost everything.

  The world seemed to end as they closed the doors of the airbus behind them, leaving them alone in the back except for the three uniformed cops and the Secret Policeman who had taken them into custody. Not even allowed the privacy to talk to each other. And Tony worried about what was in store for them the entire way. They were immune to the subliminal persuasion that the Empire used on all citizens. Torture might be something else entirely, and Garcia was certain that all three of them would break sooner or later. He wasn’t so much worried about what information they might give the authorities about Pandora Latham. There wasn’t really much they could tell them about her that would cause her harm. But his own people, the other members of his cell, and what little information he had on the other cells in his position as leader of the Opposition? That was enough to cause great concern, and a wish that he could commit suicide before that information was ripped from him.

  * * *

  Pandi followed the airbus through the sky, detouring at times to avoid sonic beams that were searching the air for her. She really wasn’t sure what she could do. Her particle beam pistol could bring the craft down, of course. But she wouldn’t be able to pull more than one of the prisoners from inside and lower him or her to the ground. Assuming the beam didn’t kill them when it ripped through the van, or that they didn’t get trapped in wreckage that prevented her from getting to them. So she followed helplessly until the van reached the landing pad on a squat building that was identified on her HUD as a police station.

  Any thought of a rescue from the roof was squashed when she saw the number of armed men on that rooftop. Including soldiers with much heavier weapons than the many policemen waiting for the van. And she was picking up the energy signatures of multiple heavy weapons emplacements. Again she was faced with a hopeless situation. She would only able to free one of the prisoners, and at the risk of that person being killed as she tried to whisk him away. So she floated in the air and watched as the three prisoners, people she felt responsible for, were taken from the van and walked in restraints toward a lift that lowered as soon as they were on it.

  Shit, thought the woman from the past, watching for a few moments more in impotent rage. I will get you out of this, if I have to topple the government of this Empire.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It has been claimed at times that our modern age of technology facilitates dictatorship.

  Henry A. Wallace

  Admiral Nagara Krishnamurta stared at the tactical holo that showed the relation of his force to the target system, wishing that he could push them forward with his mind at a faster speed. Of course that was impossible. His ships, traveling through hyper VIII at point nine eight light, were moving at as high a pseudospeed as any vessel in the known history of the Galaxy. The only faster method of travel was by wormhole, and there was still a slight risk in moving one through another. If one in a ship caused the wormhole they were moving through to collapse, that ship would be destroyed, as the parts of the ship in different areas of space were cut apart. The odds were a thousand to one against, but they still existed. Not the catastrophic destruction that could occur before the ancestors figured it out, but still bad enough for those in the ship.

  And we don’t have a ship gate ready for us on the other end, he thought, which made that wishful thinking moot as well. He did not have a direct wormhole connection to the system that Latham’s force was in, only a com link through the Donut. So they could only move through hyperspace, like they had been moving, and get to the target in the calculated time.

  And the enemy knows they are there, even if they can’t find them, yet, he thought. Latham had a strong force. Strong enough to fight off hundreds of enemy ships? Probably not. And Pandora had to move fast to rescue Watcher, which would give the enemy even more evidence that they had a Confederation task force in their system, and cause them to redouble their efforts to find it.

  Mandrake still hadn’t told Latham that Krishnamurta was coming. The Admiral had thought it a bad idea to inform her of that fact, which might make her even bolder, at a time when caution was called for. Until she goes for the rescue of Watcher, he thought. Then all hell would break loose.

  * * *

  “We think we’ve figured out what they’re up to, ma’am,” said the Chief Engineer over the com link.

  “And what is that, Engineer?” asked Dasha Mandrake.

  “Each of those blasts is spreading an ionized cloud of positive particles,” said the Engineer. “Protons of superplatinum. Enough of them interacting with the negative charge of our invisibility field will allow them to track us.”

  “Shit,” cursed Mandrake, getting up from her chair and stalking toward the tactical holo. “Show me,” she said to the Tactical Officer, who was listening in on the conversation.

  Thousands of small glowing globes appeared on the holo, each around where a warhead had gone off. There were none near either of her ships, yet, but almost a third of the area around the gas giant was now covered after fourteen hours of operations. As she watched more missiles were launched on their paths to areas that were not yet covered, exploding in pinpoints. Minutes later the glowing globes of positive ionic superplatinum appeared, moving out.

  “How much of a chance that this will work, Engineer?” asked Mandrake, giving the holo a jaundiced eye.

  “I’m not sure, ma’am. If we drop the invisibility field, then the ions wi
ll not be drawn to us. But then we are detectable to their sensors.”

  “Could we change the polarity of the field to positive?”

  “Possibly. The field was really not made to operate at reverse polarity. And repelling the ions might have the same effect as attracting them for all we know.”

  Madrake shook her head. Superplatinum was more expensive to produce than antimatter, about the same as negative matter. Especially for a tech base such as this Empire possessed. They had already pumped enough of it into the local space to build the grabber units on a hundred battleships, which meant they really wanted to find them, even at the cost of their future production.

  “Well, work it out and see what you can do,” she told the Engineer, who like her, was used to working with a much lower tech base.

  She went back to her chair and back to staring at the holo, wishing she were anywhere but this system at this time.

  * * *

  Another day and he was back in the defendant’s chair, while the prosecution presented more evidence that the defense really couldn’t dispute. I wonder why they’re even bothering to pile it on, he thought, looking around the courtroom as another holo played in the air, this one showing robot vessels destroying all civilization on the surface of a habitable planet. The eyes of the people were riveted on that scene, almost a religious frenzy on their faces. The spectacle was what was driving these people to that frenzy, the whole object of this thing.

  “Enough of this exhibit, Counselor,” said the Chief Justice, waving at the holo. “Move on to your next presentation.”

  Watcher looked back in surprise as the holo died, then up at the Emperor to see him nodding. Something is going on. Something that they didn’t plan for. He had noticed that security was much heavier around the courthouse this morning than on previous days.

  Pandi? Is she here? Then she needs to get the hell out of here, and now. But he didn’t know how to get that message to her, to tell her to call off whatever operation she had planned. Not that she’d listen to me anyway, crazy woman. What the hell did I do to inspire such loyalty?