* * *
“They’ve found us, sir,” called out Lt. Commander Dasha Mandrake over the local com. The sounds of a firefight came through the circuit.
“Get ready to pick up and run,” said Fleet Admiral Nagara Krishnamurta through the wave of fatigue that was threatening to drop him to the dirt. He was tired of this running and hiding, but didn’t see what else they could do. Standing and fighting meant defeat. Maybe they could take some of the enemy with them, though it looked as if the exchange rate would not be in their favor. But that was little consolation when defeat meant the enemy gained total control of this system, and the other systems orbiting the black hole.
“I don’t think that’s going to work this time, sir,” said the younger officer, her own voice sounding like that of someone who had about given up hope. “They’ve positioned themselves too well this time it seems. I can’t see any way of getting us out of these caves and back into the jungle.”
“So it looks like stand and die time,” said the Admiral, picking up a mag rifle and checking to make sure it was fully operational. I would have rather died on the bridge of my ship, thought the long time naval officer. But it doesn’t seem like I will be offered that choice. Satisfied that the weapon was ready he called to the other men and women to follow him to the cavern entrances. If it was to be the last fight he was determined that the fanatics would learn how real people died.
* * *
“Tell the Admiral that we’ve got them,” yelled Major Dronning Dumas into the com. Dumas looked at the deployment of his troops on his HUD and felt his spirits soar. He would gain the glory in this campaign. The command of the regiment had devolved on him with the deaths of both the Colonel in charge and the two Lt. Colonels under him. Something good has to come from walking through this accursed jungle, thought the Major. And Colonel had wanted to hold a face to face with his two senior commanders. Unfortunately for them the face to face was right on top of some kind of insect hive, and the creatures had swarmed and stung the three men to death before they even realized their danger. Even the insects were super on this world, able to push their venom injectors through material that would stop most blades, as the senior officers had found out. Which left one Major Dronning Dumas the acting commander of the fifteen hundred men in the field.
“I’ll let him know,” said the Liaison Officer on the other side of the link. “He’s a little busy right now with a local emergency, but as soon as he’s available I’ll let him know.”
“What kind of emergency?” asked Dumas, hoping it wasn’t something that put his command at risk.
“Something local,” returned the Liaison Officer. “Just handle your part of the campaign, and get those Suryans.”
“Yes, sir,” replied the Major, noting that a priority message was coming through from the other side of the mountain they had surrounded. What the hell now, he thought, just before all hell broke loose.
* * *
Watcher felt a smile break out on his face as he looked at the deployments on his suit’s HUD. I need allies, he thought, watching the red dots start to move toward the entrance to the caves his pizzos had shown him. And here they are. Almost makes me believe in a God.
Then the smile turned to a frown as he thought of his lover in the clutches of the beasts he was about to unleash hell upon. He hardened his heart and became the ultimate warrior again; ready to deal death, quickly and efficiently. [Go] he ordered over his link, walking forward with his particle beam cannon in his hand.
Watcher had augmented his suit of powered armor with add on packs for this fight, knowing that he needed all the firepower and protection he could handle. The suit was now taller and thicker than it had been, towering three meters. The heavy backpack on the dorsal region of the suit contained a massive particle accelerator system that fed by way of a wormhole into the multibarreled cannon, a much larger weapon than before, that he held at hip level. The accelerator was fed already fast moving protons from the larger accelerator on the Donut through another small wormhole, while most of the heat buildup was removed the same way through another hole, making the weapon as sustained fire as possible. The weapon system used all of the components of the smaller system he had used at the pyramid, with add ons to make it much more robust.
The tanks were arrayed in a triangle, floating ten meters above the jungle floor on automatic systems. There were always plenty of paths for the three meter wide machines. Maybe not free of all vegetation, but the vehicles were more than capable of pushing through vines and branches, and anything that couldn’t be pushed through could be burned away by the laser spots that dotted the outer surface of the tanks.
On the floor of the jungle, in three squad formations, one behind Watcher, the others to either side, were the thirty-six battlebots Watcher had brought to the party. As capable as the ones Pandora Latham had deployed, the bots looked like living Maurids as they loped low to the ground on all fours. Mounted on their backs were the particle beams and lasers they were equipped with, and other weapons lay in sheaths for use when they stood. Four in every twelve bots in each squad also carried a magazine fed rocket launcher.
The assault force covered the distance between themselves and the Nation Marines in a quick sprint. The Marines did deploy rear security, but Watcher’s force was well stealthed, moving quietly under invisibility fields. There was of course some noise, tanks moving through jungle cannot help but make a bit. That still did not alert them to the forces moving along the ground while their attention was focused up by that noise.
First blood went to Watcher, as he intended. He spotted the hyper-velocity launcher team before they spotted him, aiming as they were for one of his tanks that was overhead and slightly to the rear. Watcher pulled the trigger on his cannon and sent a wide red beam at their position. The buzzing sound turned the heads of many more of the Marines as it cut through all the other noises of the jungle. But soon it was drowned out by the sound of a body exploding through its armored suit as megajoules of energy were transferred into it, and of the tree trunk beyond blowing out from the superheated sap within it.
Watcher swung the weapon while the next barrel rotated into place, vaporizing the hyper-velocity launcher and leaving pieces of the assistant gunner’s armor scattering through the jungle. The result was the other Marines opening fire on Watcher with their own weapons, and in an instant high velocity rounds were bouncing from his heavy armor after slowing through his electromagnetic field. His suit sensors registered some laser beams as well, and the superconductors built into the outer shell shuttled that energy into yet another small wormhole heat sink.
Moments after the enemy opened fire the robots and the tanks, now confronted with a target rich environment, returned it. Soon the air was filled with particle beams, lasers, and high-velocity cannon rounds tearing into the positions of the Nation Marines.
The Marines fought bravely enough, continuing to return fire as they were overwhelmed position by position. They scored some hits on the tanks, totally ineffectual, and knocked out two of the battlebots. Everything they sent at Watcher was repelled by his electromag field or the armor of his heavy suit. And every hit scored on a Marine was a killing shot. Soon even their courage began to fail, and the Marines on the flanks fled into the jungle, while those in the center could no longer hold the tide and died in place.
[Under cover] ordered Watcher to his robots. [Form a defensive perimeter]. He looked back at the tanks. [Forward] he ordered them, walking to where he knew the entrance to the cavern was.
The suit levitated into the air, then moved forward to the entrance where waited some frightened looking men in the uniform of the Suryan Navy, with a couple of armored Marines by their side. Watcher ordered the faceplate of his helmet to retract, then held out his hands. “I am Watcher,” he said to the people he knew were the enemies of the Nation of Humanity. “And I believe we can be of mutual benefit to each other.”
Chapter Eighteen
Never forget that no
military leader has ever become great without audacity. Karl Von Clausewitz
Pandora gritted her teeth as she crawled along the air duct. Her flesh was rubbing raw against the metal of the tube, and even with the nanites blocking most of her pain receptors her already damaged flesh was causing problems. The bodysuit that should have cushioned her flesh a little was too torn to prevent her skin from contacting the floor of the duct. She stopped for a moment and rolled over to take stock of her body. There was some fluid oozing from the ruins of her breasts, and the burn scars on her belly and thighs were a horror to behold. Pandora shuddered as she looked at the damage that had been done to her beautiful body. She knew it could be repaired, that it would be if she could make it back to Watcher and the med labs of the station. But it still horrified her on a deep psychological level.
I’m gonna get them fuckers, she thought of the Nation people who had captured her, the Admiral who had ordered her torture, and of the Nation of Humanity in general. She rolled back over and started forward again on her hands and knees, following the schematic in her head.
At least it has artificial gravity, she thought, then gave a quick chuckle at that thought. Back in her old life, in the solar system, artificial gravity was considered a fantasy that would never come. The only gravity generated by ships was either from thrust or spin. Now even ships she considered primitive possessed gravity generators.
She came to another hatch that was set to block her way. She sent her stolen code into the local control circuit and waited. And waited some more, panic starting to grow inside her. They’ve wiped the code, she thought, seeing herself trapped in these air ducts until they came for her. And they’re probably looking at me on sensors right now, she thought, her skin crawling at the picture in her mind.
I’ve got to do something, she thought, wondering for a moment what she could do, then deciding that she was equipped with what she needed for this job. Her implants contained a microprocessor probably as powerful as what was used in the shuttles aboard this ship, and she had some basic codes gathered from the Chief Inquisitor that she had not used to this point, that would probably not trigger the alarms if they were used to probe into the main computer.
Pandora probed with her mind, her implant catching hold of the carrier wave that allowed link communications throughout the ship, then using a code to enter the stream. A quick thought and the code brought her into the ship’s comp system, while another took her into the security system. Here was where it got just a little bit tricky. A wrong move and she would be locked out, and the system would be alert for other attempts. She locked onto a node of the security system, sent an inquiry, then allowed her implants to analyze the reply.
The implant crunched the data, then found the backdoor of the relatively, to it, primitive system. The software of her implant had been developed with all of the common backdoors into less advanced systems closed off. And it knew what those backdoors looked like, and how to exploit them. Especially the backdoors of Nation of Humanity programs, since they had access to so many computers from suits and equipment, including a damaged shuttle with intact comp systems, after the Nation Marines had invaded the station.
In a few moments another signal came back through the ship’s net, letting her know that the security protocals had been overridden on this section of the air duct system. A constant feed had been established that would show her heat signature in this part of the duct system until a code was sent that said otherwise. Great, thought Pandora with a smile. Now I just need to get out of this space before they send someone, because if my fake signal is in the same place where the real me is, I’m not much better off.
This next part was even trickier, involving telling the security system to raise a blast door while enticing it to not alert the other human watchers. Again she rode the carrier wave in, using a different code so the system would not notice that the same user was messing with the same area. My granddad used to talk about the days when they didn’t have everything hooked up to a computer, she thought as the algorithm ran. At least not everything, yet. When he was a boy, and people still used physical locks to secure stuff. The door started to rise to her front, and she prepared to move through. As soon as it hit the top she was scooting under it and on her way. Computers are great, but there’s still something to say for a good bolt that I couldn’t have gotten to. Only wish I had opted for the quantum entanglement feature about now. But unfortunately she was cut off from the mainframe quantum computer on the station. She hadn’t liked the idea of that supercomputer having an unrestricted channel to her brain. Maybe next time I’ll listen to Watcher when he tells me he thinks it’s a good idea.
Pandora crawled down one more branch, then was in front of the door that closed her off from where she wanted to be. She knew this one was of thicker construction, and was controlled by a much more robust security system. She also knew she needed to get through it if she had a hope of fighting her way free of this ship. So there was nothing to it but to do it. She linked into the system, this time using a slightly different approach to the back door, using another security code she had intercepted on the way here.
At first she thought she had made a mistake as nothing happened for a moment, and she expected to pick up an alert signal telling of her whereabouts. She then breathed out a sigh of relief as the door started to slide open. She waited for it to reach the ceiling, but it stopped three quarters of the way up. An alarm did sound through the carrier wave, and the door started back down. Pandora moved in an instant, realizing the danger if she got caught by a descending door, and the greater danger if she didn’t get through. She jumped forward, feeling the door fall onto her rear. She grimaced, grabbed a pull bar in the duct, and jerked herself through even as her belly hit the floor. She pulled her legs in tight and yelped as the door slammed down to take two toes off of her left foot. Klaxons started going off, and she knew that people she didn’t want to deal with would soon be here.
“Crap,” she said under her breath, reaching down to grab the injured area and thanking the God of her father that it hadn’t taken both legs, or possibly cut her in half. The bleeding was already slowing to a stop under the attention of the nanites, and the pain block was again going into effect. I got to move, she thought, turning her body, then kicking the grill out of the vent leading into what she hoped was the room she needed.
She followed the grill into the room, knowing that if there was someone there she needed to move fast. Pandi landed lightly, most of her weight on her right foot, a stab of pain shooting up her left leg from her injured member hitting the floor. She stifled a yelp, then held back a shout of triumph as she saw what she was looking for leaning against a wall. She scanned the room quickly, making sure there was no one there to interfere, then limped over to the combat armor, probing with her implant and establishing a link with the on-board computer.
The suit still looked battered, the outer skin scuffed in many places, a dent here and there. But nowhere near as damaged as it had been. She read through the link that all internal damage had been repaired, and a weakened but still functional grabber unit was now operating on the leg the original mechanism had been blown off of. The computer gave her a short historical report as she backed into the armor and felt the physical connections made when the neck section plugged into her interface.
The Nation tech had indeed given the suit a good dose of EMP from the inside, where there wasn’t the protection given by the outer skin, destroying the working nanites. They hadn’t wanted the suit to repair itself, something within its capabilities that they seemed to be well aware of. They had dosed it again once they got it aboard, then stored it here in this armory to make sure it was secure. The main systems of the suit were of course protected from any level of EMP, and so were the compartments where the spare nanites were stored. As soon as activity around the suit ceased it had released the nanites and put them to work, repairing the knocked out nanobots and making sure all internal systems were good to go.
External skin was mostly ignored, except where major damage affected the functioning of the armor, and of course the grabber needed for levitation.
Pandora smiled as that report flashed in her mind, and sent an order to complete skin repairs with dispatch. The suit closed around her, seams becoming solid armor as the alloys sealed at the molecular level. The suit powered up, and Pandora was happy to see that she still had a half charge. She looked over at a power plug and extruded a probe from her left gauntlet, then slammed the extrusion into the outlet. The suit began to suck power from the conduit, and Pandora watched on her HUD as the suit storage meter began to rise until it was almost fully charged.
The woman was feeling good about her chances now. In the armor she was almost invulnerable to the weapons of the Nation’s personnel. She didn’t think they would use hyper-velocity missiles aboard the ship, or heavy beam weapons. Looking over at the racks of weapons she saw both, and felt under no constraint using them to perforate the walls of the vessel. In fact, she thought she would feel really good breaking things and putting holes where they were not wanted.
“Stop right there,” called out a voice, at the same time that Pandora’s armor told her the door was opening behind her.
Shit, she thought, hoping that she could get the last little bit of power into the crystalline matrix capacitors, realizing that she had gotten as much as she was going to get. She raised her electromag shields and armed her built in lasers, looking on her HUD as the four Marines all moved into position and pointed their mag rifles at her. She smiled as she noted that they only wore the light shipboard armor meant to protect from hand to hand or blade weapons, and which also provided some ballistic protection. But no protection from what she was about to do.
To Well And Back (The Deep Dark Well) Page 20