Deeper and Darker (Deep Dark Well Book 3)

by Doug Dandridge

  “We’ve gotten everyone off of Niven,” said Captain Dasha Mandrake, coming out of the first portal after the last weapons box. Her armor had been reconfigured for ground combat, as had that of every spacer aboard.

  Watcher turned to that portal, and with a thought collapsed it back to a tiny point that slid back into the probe. “You know what to do with your ship, Captain,” said Watcher, looking at the tall Suryan. “Just as soon as everyone gets off Vengeance.”

  “I do, my Lord,” said Mandrake, her faceplate up, the look of angst on her bare face.

  “I understand, Captain,” said Pandora, clapping her subordinate on the shoulder. “It’s always rough to lose a ship. But if it works out, it will definitely be worth it.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said the Captain, swallowing, her eyes glistening. Those eyes closed, and all knew that the Captain was linking back to her ship, taking control of it, making sure everything was OK, getting ready to take it remotely into battle.

  Pandora turned to see more beings coming out of the second portal. Nonhumans. At first she thought they were more robots, just like so many she had seen before. Then she saw that many of them had their faceplates up, revealing the living visages of sentient creatures. Husteds, kangaroo like sentients that moved with short hopping motions, their battle suits configured mostly to carry light infantry weapons, though some inhabited heavier suits with missiles or heavy beam projectors riding on the back.

  The other forms were even more welcome, at least to those they had come to help. Maurids, low wolf like sentients, the deadliest non-augmented intelligent creatures in the known Galaxy. The creatures moved with uncommon grace, even in their armor. All had holstered pistols at their sides, and a pair of particle beam rifles mounted directly to the back of their suits. Though capable of bipedal motion, in fact it was necessary for the use of their forepaws in their hand configuration, they went into battle as low slung quadrupeds, fast and hard to hit.

  “How many are you bringing across?” she asked Watcher. He had told her something earlier, but in all the excitement she was not paying attention.

  “Eventually all that we have ready,” said Watcher, returning the salute of a Maurid officer. “Two brigades of infantry, a couple battalions of armor, and all the air support I can get. But most will come through later, when we get the gate from Vengeance, and a direct link back to the Donut.”

  “And space support?” asked Pandi.

  “Most of what we have will be going to Krishnamurta,” said Watcher. “We’ll have some missile support in orbit, but that’s about it.”

  The Captain of the Vengeance came through the second portal on the tail end of the last company of Marines, these Suryans.

  “Link with your ship, Captain,” Watcher told him as he shrunk that portal down as well. “Let’s get this show moving.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Under conditions of tyranny, it is far easier to act than to think.

  Hannah Arendt

  “We have something coming up from the planet, your Majesty,” reported the CNO over the com.

  “Show me,” ordered Kitticaris, and a holo appeared in front of him, the view from one of the battleships in orbit around Odin. There was a cruiser closer in, and the lean shapes of two destroyers closer still. The blue clouds of Odin swirled in their bands further below, huge flares of lightning illuminating the dark surface.

  Another holo came up, much smaller, near to the other. It was a sensor screen, showing two objects, still mostly obscured, but coming up, getting clearer on the track by the minute.

  “Do you want us to try and capture, your Majesty?”

  “No, by the Ancients. As soon as you can get a weapons lock on those ships, blow them out of space. If anyone ejects in life pods, take them prisoner. Everyone else can die.”

  The scanner screen was showing clear returns on the ships now, definitely the two Confederation destroyers. And what the hell are they up to, thought the Emperor.

  One of the vessels came rocketing out of the clouds, pulling hundreds of gravities. As it passed the one atmosphere level its skin was glowing red from the friction it was generating against the gas. Almost like a reentry in reverse. The other was rising in a much more sedate manner, accelerating at a mere forty gravities. It was not clear what the strategy was, since normally two vessels would try to stay close, at least in altitude, so both could engage in defensive fire to the benefit of each. But the one was rising into the sporadic clouds of the upper atmosphere, while the other was lagging.

  Unless the one is injured, thought the Emperor. That could be why the one is lagging, because it can’t generate any more boost. But that makes no sense either. Why wouldn’t the other ship be riding guard dog on its damaged comrade?

  “We’re taking fire,” called out the Captain of the battleship on the com. “But they seem to be concentrating on several of our destroyers.”

  That was apparent from the glowing points on those destroyers, lasers pumping pentawatts of power into the hulls of the ships. Armor ruptured, gas spurted into space, one laser ring exploded along a fifth of its circumference and died. Particle beams, glowing an angry red as they penetrated the air, still visible with residual heat as they spanned the vacuum, struck both destroyers, burning gashes on the hulls, penetrating armor, reaching deeper into the vessels.

  If only I had weapons like that, thought the Emperor. No thought for the crews of the ships, only a cold analysis of the effectiveness of a much more advanced weapon. The particle beams on his ships could, at best, project protons at point nine six light speed. While those enemy beams were moving at point nine nine nine five light, packing thousands of times the energy per mass than the weapons of his ships. Any equal fight would be anything but.

  One of the destroyers flashed with fire, then erupted with white flame that blasted the outer hull away in pieces. A fraction of a second later the rest of the ship converted to hot plasma as the antimatter in the engines breached. The holo flickered for a moment as some of the transmitting sensors were taken out by pieces of the destroyer, then steadied as more devices were brought into the mix.

  The enemy destroyer that was furthest out took some hits of its own. Lasers bent around the hull as the electromag field, filled with ionized hydrogen from the atmosphere, deflected the photons. Particle beams thrust into that field at full strength, but less than ten percent came through to strike the ship, not enough to pierce the armor, which glowed red for a few moments at contact, then cooled rapidly.

  The second enemy ship opened fire, concentrating on the second Imperial destroyer that had already been hit. Its weapons were slightly weaker than those of the first, due to it still being kilometers below the one atmosphere line. The beams slashed into the Imperial ship, running deep gashes back and forth and leaving a wreck floating in Odin orbit.

  Next up was a cruiser, a much more heavily defended warship. The two Confederation ships picked on it with beam weapons, while the ship at the higher altitude launched a spread of missiles, half of them heading for the cruiser, the rest for a battleship. Beam weapons from a dozen ships hit the leading Confederation ship, this time blasting through its screens with the power of hundreds of weapons.

  The cruiser took out most of the missiles targeting it. Most, meaning not enough, as three missiles hit the three million ton ship. Their kinetic energy was negligible. Their gigaton class warheads were anything but. The way they hit pushed the ship to the port and down, to eventually hit the atmosphere and continue falling in, doomed. The battleship also sustained a hit that took out half of her systems. That ship would survive, if it wasn’t hit again.

  The enemy ship at the highest altitude continued up, putting on more acceleration. Imperial fire ripped through the hull, knocking out surface installations, opening the interior and allowing inner atmosphere and hydrogen to change places. It put on another burst of acceleration, pulling almost fifteen hundred gravities, on a heading for the very battleship that was sending the hol
o to the Emperor.

  Stop them, thought Kitticaris as the enemy destroyer, what he continued to think of as a light cruiser, sped toward the flagship, building velocity and kinetic energy. Pieces of hull armor were peeled off, continuing toward the battleship at high but lesser velocity than the still accelerating ship.

  It was a total wreck that hit the battleship, a vessel that could not have life still aboard. The Emperor didn’t see the impact. All he saw was the holo dying as the enemy ship moved very close, really just a blur.

  “They destroyed the flagship,” called out the CNO over the com, as the holo came back to life with the feed from another ship. This one showed a spreading cloud of pieces of ship, most very small, glittering in the light of the sun that was coming around the side of the planet. And some larger pieces, a section of hull with a grabber fin, the globe of an auxiliary fusion reactor, a million ton section of stern.

  “What about the other ship?” asked the Emperor, his eyes still not believing the evidence that the enemy ship had flown a suicide mission.

  “It dropped back into the atmosphere, your Majesty,” said the shocked CNO. “We’re still tracking them, but it’s already getting fuzzy.”

  “Watcher must be on the other ship,” said Kitticaris in a soft voice. “Keep up the blockade,” he ordered the CNO. “Keep up the depth bombing. I want that other ship. Watcher and his woman wouldn’t have suicided like that.”

  “Why would either ship have done that?” asked the still confused Admiral.

  “Maybe they were testing the waters,” said Kitticaris, not sure himself why they would have done such a thing, his mind searching for an answer. “Thinking they might have been able to break away, with that first ship providing cover. When it didn’t work, they ordered the first ship to cover them.” And do you really believe that, Kitticaris? It was what he would have done, whatever it took to preserve his own life, no matter the cost to others. But he had the feeling that Watcher, and especially his woman, were soft, not able to make the hard decisions. So why did they do it?

  * * *

  “Niven is gone,” said Mandrake in a choked voice, opening her eyes.

  And it’s always hard to lose a command, thought Pandi, putting a gauntlet on her subordinate’s armored shoulder. They had all watched the battle on a holo, their view somewhat limited to that of Niven and Vengeance, and Niven had lost some of her visual scanners early on. But the old girl acquitted herself well, thought the Commodore, who had at one time counted the ship among her command. Almost eighteen times her own mass, taken out, in a situation where the other side had all the advantages. Technological advantage or not, Niven had been outmassed several hundred to one in the battle, and the ship had been damaged. Now, if only Vengeance was as successful.

  “Probe was launched, my Lord,” said the Captain of the Vengeance, opening his eyes and looking at Watcher.

  Pandi stifled a short laugh when she saw the expression on Watcher’s face. Watcher had tried to get the Suryans to call him by his name, or at least Sir, if he couldn’t get them to do the first. Surya was a kingdom, though unlike most they didn’t have a hereditary nobility outside of the Royal Family. Still, the appointed and elected officials who ran the Kingdom for the King were addressed as Lord or Lady. And the Suryans had a hard time calling their high level leaders anything else. So why not call Watcher, a man they saw as at least equal to their King, by at least that honorific.

  “And there were no problems with the launch?”

  “No, my Lord. The wormhole is on its way here, and Vengeance is back in hiding beneath the clouds.”

  And hopefully drawing the attention of the Imperial Fleet, thought Pandi. She linked into the Donut’s computer through her entangled link, and was happy to see that the probe containing the wormhole back to the station was on its way to the moon, well stealthed, with no suspicion that it was there.

  “It should be here within two hours,” she told Watcher as she came out of the link.

  “And the forces I want to come through it will be ready by that time,” said Watcher, nodding his head.

  “You’re not really going to take on his army in a head to head battle, are you, my Lord?” asked Mandrake, who had been told moments before that she would be one of the division staff officers.

  “Nope,” said Watcher, looking over at the woman, then waving for the gathered officers to come closer. They were in the small cavern, which the engineers were in the process of expanding into a command post, well out of the sight of anything the Empire might have. “Listen up,” he said as the officers came within listening range, including the regimental and brigade commanders that were already on the moon. “When we move, we need to move fast, to keep the enemy off balance. No one is to get into a stand up fight that fixes our positions. We already know that the psychopathic son of a bitch who runs this totalitarian regime is willing to nuke his own people to get us. So you need to move.”

  Watcher looked over at one officer who was not human, a native from a Maurid civilization that was already space born, one that had conquered their own system in the Supersystem. And one that had suffered at the hands of the Nation of Humanity, and so were very grateful to Watcher and Pandora. “You, Colonel, will take out the first elements of the enemy, and open the way for our heavy forces. You and your regiment will have the honor of starting this game.” His regiment was already on the moon, ready to go, and would be used to confuse the enemy prior to the diversionary assault. Another commando regiment would soon be coming through, and would be the actual palace assault team.

  The Maurid gave a frightful smile of razor sharp teeth as he saluted. “My honor, sir. And my regiment will not let you down.”

  “Are you sure this is such a good idea?” asked Pandi, whispering in his ear, though she was sure the Maurid at least could hear her.

  “I don’t want to kill all the people on this world, smash their industry, kill millions of their spacers,” he said, a grim expression on his face. “This is the only way I see that we can do this. And I wish you would go back to the Donut once we have that wormhole in place. I really need for one of us to make it through this thing, no matter what.”

  “I didn’t come all this way to rescue you from the clutches of that sorry SOB, just to turn tail and run away before the final act. Where you go, lover, I go. And just you try and stop me.”

  Watcher looked no happier about that than the first time she had told him. As far as she was concerned, he needed her. Augmented as she was, she had to be one of his best warriors. And he would need his best warriors around him if he was to take on the security the Emperor was sure to have around him. “Just keep your head low,” said Watcher, “and don’t make a target of yourself.”

  “And you do the same, cause I’ll be right at your back the entire way.”

  * * *

  “What the hell are we going to do?” asked Tomas Ceasar, looking around the table at the cell meeting. It was actually more than one cell, and some of the people were meeting each other for the first time. Such was unheard of, but what was happening to them was unprecedented as well.

  “I know what I’m going to do,” said Freddie Santana, the man who had called this meeting once his own cell had been busted, in a manner that indicated someone in his organization had talked. There was no question who the talker was, since the police had arrested Tony, Jorge and Katherine hours before the arrests started coming down. It didn’t really matter which of the three had talked, or even if it had been all three. The police now had the names of dozens of contacts, who each had dozens of more, until almost the entire Opposition was at risk of arrest. And arrest meant death, after they had been mined of all the information they possessed. The society could not afford to have so many people free who were immune to the programming of that society.

  “I’m going to arm myself and fight back,” said Santana, turning a fierce look onto each of the people present.

  “We’ll be crushed,” said a woman that Santana di
dn’t know. He didn’t know most of the people here, who were all cell leaders with contacts to other leaders. He had been a member of his cell, with one name to contact if something happened to his leader. “They will kill all of us,” she continued, her face a mask of fear.

  “And if you don’t fight,” said Freddie, pointing his finger at her. “What will you do? Go home, go to your job. Hope that no one comes for you. And when they do, what then? Will you fight, just yourself against an overwhelming number of police, putting your family or coworkers at risk? Or just let them take you, to be questioned, tortured, and then killed.”

  “And if I resist?” asked the woman in a pleading voice. “What happened to my family then?”

  “Probably no worse than what would happen to them if you’re caught,” said Stefan Augellar, his eyes narrowed. “They will be experimented on, so that the Empire can become better at reading the signs of what they consider an aberration among the sheep.”

  “We could all run, hide,” said the woman. A few of the people at the table nodded, but only a few. “We could go out into the country.”

  “Where we will be strangers, not belonging, easy to find,” said Freddie, looking into the eyes of the woman. She’s afraid, as are we all. “None of us want this fight. At least not at this time. But the time has been chosen for us.”

  “All because you decided to help an outsider,” said the woman in an accusing voice. “If you hadn’t have aided her, we wouldn’t be in this fix.”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” said Freddie, holding out his hands. “She offered the promise of freedom.”

  “And she took that monster and ran,” shouted the woman, rising up in her chair, and glaring at Santana. “So what in the hell did you accomplish?”

  “She said they would free us from the tyranny of Kitticaris,” said Freddie. “She promised the might of their Station, and the new Confederation they were building around it, would free us.”

  “And you believed those words?” yelled the woman. “Those lies?”