To Well And Back (The Deep Dark Well) Read online

“Kill the witch,” yelled the leader of the men, bracing his shield and raising his sword overhead.

  Pandi thrust her blade through the shield, the super sharp sword made up of advanced materials held in place by a strong electromagnetic field pushing into the wood and metal like it wasn’t there. It continued through the chain mail and into the body of the man. Pandi pulled the sword free with a draw cut, and the lifeless man fell to the floor.

  Two swords quested for the woman, but she moved much too quickly for either man to target her. One swished above her head, while the other pushed forward, missing her as she stopped in place. She batted one sword aside and sliced through the other, then flicked her blade in like a striking rattlesnake. And then there were three frightened looking men between her and the King. And they’ll die in place before they let me through, she thought. I really don’t need to kill all these people, who are just doing as they are ordered. She remembered that there was another way, one she had forgotten in the excitement of the moment.

  With that thought she pulled a small object off of her belt and aimed the front toward the men. The ovoid shape vibrated in her hand, and the men went down, eyes rolling up, then closing as consciousness left them.

  Something hit Pandora in the back, hard, right between the shoulder blades. The leather vest she wore under her dress hardened to the consistency of steel and repelled whatever it had been, but it still hurt. She turned with pantherish grace, her sword coming around, to see an old man with a dagger in his hand. There was a shocked expression on his face, and his eyes kept darting from Pandi to the dagger and back again. Pandi shook her head, then punched the man in the face, knocking him down and out with her augmented strength.

  Now to get me an asshole, she thought, turning and leaping over the downed men-at-arms, heading through the passageway beyond. She looked left, then right, catching a glimpse of the robes the King was wearing disappear through another entrance. She ran to the opening and found a set of stairs going up. Pandi took the steps two at a time, leaping into a hall with several thick doors set on each side. The one furthest down the hall slammed shut as she watched, and she heard a heavy bolt slam home.

  Got you, she thought, running to the door. She ignored the entreaties of Watcher, her friend and lover trying to dissuade her from her self-assigned mission. Pandora Latham was having none of it.

  The stout iron trimmed wooden door would have stood up to a ram for some time. The super sharp sword went through it like it had rotted to the point of collapse. She pushed down and felt a bit more resistance as the sword sliced through the iron bolt. A swift kick flung the door open, to reveal the trembling King standing in the center of the room, a long sword in his shaking hand.

  “Who are you?” yelled the King in a tremulous voice. “From what realm of Hell do you come?”

  “Not Hell,” said Pandi, stalking forward. “Heaven. I am the Angel the just God, come to make you pay for your crimes.”

  “That is not true,” said the other man in the room, wearing the ornate robes of a higher clergy member. “You are not from God. The King was ordained by God, and does his will.”

  Pandi played the stunner over the man, making sure she did not touch his head with any part of the beam. She wanted him awake.

  “And now you pay,” she said to the King, bringing her blade back in a blur. “And may your soul burn in Hell for eternity.”

  At that last she swung forward. The King may have been a formidable warrior in his younger days. He was not such now. And his life was taken swiftly by the blade of the demon woman.

  Pandora Latham walked over to the Priest and stood above him. “I am the Angel of the vengeful God. A God who cries over the trials of his people. Make sure that the next to ascend the throne knows that God is not happy with the way the nobility treats the people. Let him know that the vengeful Angel will be back, should they decide to continue the policies of the dead King.”

  With that she turned away, contacting her robots through the link and planning their egress from the castle.

  [That was evil, Pandora Latham,] said the voice of Watcher in her mind over the circuit. [We need to talk, you and I.]

  “And if I don’t want to talk?” she said aloud.

  The blade in her hand shimmered for a moment, then fell into dust at her feet. She stared at the remains of the blade for a moment, and realized that he still controlled the technology that she was using. “Ok, lover,” she said in a resigned tone, knowing that he had made his point. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  Chapter Two

  Racism, xenophobia and unfair discrimination have spawned slavery, when human beings have bought and sold and owned and branded fellow human beings as if they were so many beasts of burden. Desmond Tutu

  “Admiral on the bridge,” called out the voice of the first officer to spot the personage of the fleet commander.

  “At ease,” called out Admiral Miklas Gerasi, striding toward his chair that overlooked the organized chaos that was the bridge of the battleship Orca. He stared at the holo tank, and the system of eight stars displayed thereon. I didn’t think I would be back here so soon, he thought, his mind going back to his mission two years past. And if I never came back it still would have been too soon.

  But they had needed someone who knew the system, and Gerasi was the most knowledgeable flag officer in the fleet as far as the Supersystem was concerned. And I don’t even have Midas to lean on. Valaris Midas had been promoted to Commodore, and was leading a division within the other task force, the one on the way here. Gerasi looked with ill-concealed contempt at the Flag Captain they had saddled him with.

  “Captain Lashan,” growled the Admiral, plopping down in his chair. “How long till orbital insertion?”

  The Captain looked down his long patrician nose at his military superior and social superior. He started to say something, seemed to think better of it, then thought for a moment. As a nephew of the Patriarch of the Nation of Humanity, the man had little to fear of any superior. A superior officer who punished him in any manner better have a perfect case, if he wanted to survive the Inquisition that would be called to review the incident. But Gerasi had already raked this officer over the coals in front of his crew, and only a stupid man would not realize they were on a long deployment in which the Admiral’s word was law, and there was no contact with the Theocracy of the home state.

  “We should be in orbit in about forty-nine hours,” said the officer, his eyes unfocused in the faraway look of link. His voice stayed in that haughty tone of better than thou, and when his eyes focused on the real world again the same look returned to his face. “We will return to normal space drive in thirty-eight hours, then continue into the system on reactionless. With the Admiral’s permission, of course.”

  Gerasi thought about the information for a moment, making the Captain wait as well as a benefit. With Alcubierre, or the FTL pseudo drive that actually destroyed the space in front of the ship and recreated it behind, they were still in touch with normal space in most respects. They could look out over the Universe to all sides with the exception of front and rear. Signals, including light, could not reach them from the bow, as they were obliterated along with the space they were in. And anything coming from the stern could not catch up, as space was created faster than the light could travel. And basic doctrine taught that it was a very bad idea to operate the drive within the confines of a solar system. They could destroy space, but material objects were another matter altogether. They could wipe out a small asteroid massing much less than the ship. But run into a moon or a planet and the story was different. The surface of the body might take some damage, a hundred meters or so into the soil, over a hundred of square kilometers of surface. But the ship would come apart at the seams, and spew particular matter of atomic and subatomic material in all directions. That would also be bad for the planet, but it would still exist at the end of the incident, while the ship would not.

  He had used the drives on his flee
t the last time he had been in the system, within close proximity to the Donut and the massive black hole it orbited. It had been a desperate gamble, and had cost him a quartet of battleships, one into the maw of the black hole. But it had been the only way to get in through the defenses of the station, and get the tech he had come for. People back home had not been happy with those losses, but had been ecstatic at the haul. And someday the ships of his nation would be equipped with the same advanced drive as used by the Ancestors. But this was not yet the day.

  “Very well,” said Gerasi, getting up from his chair and walking to the main hatch to the bridge. “Keep me apprised of any changes, and I will be back on the bridge in four hours for an update.”

  Gerasi could feel the glare of the Captain on his back as he headed off the bridge. So we don’t like each other, thought the Admiral. Well too damned bad. We just have to work together.

  * * *

  “You have made great strides here, Commodore,” said Fleet Admiral Nagara Krishnamurta of the Kingdom of Surya. He looked up and down the long corridor of the station, and the Marine honor guard that stood along the passageway.

  “Thank you, Admiral,” said the slightly pudgy woman who had been put in command of the Kingdom’s presence in the Supersystem. “Our friends have been of great service as well.”

  Our friends, thought the Admiral, shaking his head. I still wonder how much of our friends those two really are. Or if there are more of them, hidden in the shadows.

  He couldn’t complain too much though. Their friends had equipped them to be on equal footing with the Nation of Humanity. It would have been nice if they had given them superior tech, but the pair of humans had been unwilling to go that far.

  A superman from the here and now, and a woman from the past, thought the Admiral, continuing along behind the Commodore into a large observation room looking down over an orange and blue planet. Saviors or devils? Even the Council of Ministers can’t decide.

  “And how is the work planetside going?” he asked Commodore Natasha Sundraka, studying the pattern of continents and islands on the blue seas.

  “With the humans,” she said with a smile. “Very well. At first they thought we were the Gods returning from the heavens. It took a bit of teaching to convince them that we are as human as they. And a couple of accidental deaths among our people.” She frowned at this last, and Krishnamurta could read the pain in her face. But she had been chosen as much for her connection to the Church as to the military, and he was sure that such as she would never get used to losing people.

  Like any of us ever do, he thought, remembering the casualties he had taken trying to intercept the Nation forces on the outskirts of their own system. A desperation move that had proven unwise. “And the aliens?” he said, nodding his head toward the planet.

  “They, are more of a problem,” admitted the woman, her lips pursing into a pout. “We have Maurids on the planet. And you’ve never seen such a beastly bunch of aliens.”

  “How intelligent are they?”

  “Devilishly intelligent,” said the Commodore, glaring at the planet. “At least as smart as we are. I don’t see how the Ancestors ever controlled them. They can move like lightning, and lay hidden for hours. And that demon God they worship. I almost wish the true Gods would strike them dead during a worship service.”

  “Not a very Godly attitude, Commodore,” admonished the Admiral, waving a finger. “What would the Church Elders think of such? We are here to lead our sophont brothers back to the fold. Not kill them.”

  “I know admiral,” said the woman with a sigh, putting her hands behind her back and walking over to the observation room bar. “I know. But these seem the children of the devil.”

  “And you have not been able to save any of these creatures?” asked the Admiral, tapping his foot on the floor and rubbing his chin with his hand.

  “Maybe a few hundred,” said the Commodore, pouring herself a drink and raising an eyebrow at her superior.

  “I would love one,” he answered, walking toward the bar, while the rest of his staff moved to the window to look out at the world their Kingdom had claimed.

  “A few hundred,” repeated the Commodore, pouring some liquor into a glass and handing it to the Admiral. “Maybe a thousand who have come to the mission, seeking sanctuary from another tribe or confederation, or some such organization. Most eat our food and shelter under our guns, but only pay lip service to our offer of salvation. And of those about two hundred, maybe three, actually have embraced our Gods.”

  “And how are those worthies behaving?” asked the Admiral, taking a sip and feeling the bite of good whisky.

  “A little different than most adherents to the faith,” said the woman, looking back toward the window. “Oh, they act well enough, but there is something foreign to their thought patterns. They’re. Well, they’re...”

  “Alien is the term I think you’re looking for Commodore,” said the Admiral with a head nod and a smile. “They think differently than we do, because they are wired differently. For whatever reason the Gods gave them different brains, different kinds of neurons, even, in some cases, completely different cellular structure. Or, if you believe the scientists, they evolved that way in different environments, though the Gods still had a hand in it. So they think differently than us. Not better or worse, in some cases faster and deeper. But different.”

  “And that is what we must learn to deal with?” asked the Commodore with a frown, swallowing another slug of liquor.

  “If we want to spread the faith across the Galaxy, and perpetuate the kind of civilization that we want for ourselves and our children, then yes,” said the Admiral, turning and walking back to the window. “That is what we must learn to deal with. Now,” he said, turning back and walking over to the Commodore. “What’s been going on with our deadly enemies, the ones whose motivations we cannot mistake or misjudge?”

  “They have brought another task force into the Suspersystem,” said the Commodore, her expression grim. “Equal in size to yours.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” said the Admiral with a grimace. “And what have they been up to on that star they have claimed? While all the fleets were away.”

  “Nothing good,” said the Commodore, shaking her head. “The kind of stuff that we have grown used to from the Xenophobe bastards. But let me show you.” The Commodore walked toward another doorway, motioning for the admiral to follow her.

  And why do I think I’m not going to like this? he thought, walking into the conference room and taking a seat. Because I’m not a complete idiot is why.

  * * *

  “It sure is hot,” complained one of the staff officers.

  It sure is, thought Admiral Miklas Gerasi, glaring back at the man who had stated the obvious, and reminded the senior officer of something he was trying to ignore. He looked up into the sky, tinted slightly orange from the light of the local K4 star. Ks were not the brightest of stars, but the planet was close in to the inner limit of the life zone, and at that position any planet was hot.

  They had reached the top of the small hill that had been their target, and Gerasi wondered yet another time why the base commander had wanted them to walk up here when they could have seen this just as well from air car or shuttle. Though he had to admit that the view was spectacular.

  In all directions stretched jungle of purple tinted green, while in the distance were high mountains with a permanent white cap on their peaks. The sky was streaked with clouds, not enough to cut down on the fury of the too close sun. And directly in front was the cleared area of a landing field, and the score or so finished hangers, barracks and administration buildings of the base. Tiny figures moved across the area, humans in battle armor, ready to put down any revolt, and the aliens that they were supervising.

  “The Hustedeans are a naturally lazy race,” said the base commander, Marine Colonel Joshua Ramirez. “Kind of stupid, too. Only a seven on the sentient scale.”

 
While humans are a ten, thought Gerasi, nodding his head. But all races are on a bell curve, which means that some of these aliens are probably smarter than you are, Ramirez. Since you are nowhere near the positive end of our curve. “But you have no trouble getting them to work?”

  “They work, or they don’t eat,” said the Marine with a smile. “And don’t work long enough and they eat a bullet. Even those stupid fuckers can get the point after they see enough of their fellows thrown into a mass grave.”

  “But you still have enough workers?”

  “They are always more in that damned jungle,” said the Colonel, wiping his own brow of the beading sweat. “We just find another village, and bring out the ones that are useful to us. The others feed the carrion eaters, of course.”

  “Until there are no more left of them in the area,” said the Admiral, pointedly looking at the Base Commander. “Until there are no more of them left on the planet.”

  “That is what Mother Church commands of us,” said the officer, making the sign of the open hand to the forehead. “This planet was meant for man, not for the caricatures of humans put here by the evil one.”

  There was a commotion on the field. One of the Hustedeans had fallen to his knees, and a guard was gesturing and obviously screaming at him, though he could not be heard at this distance. The alien kneeled on the open field, head down, trying to get up and stumbling back. The human pulled a pistol from a belt holster and waved it around. With a shout the man pointed the gun at the head of the creature, and the pistol bucked silently in the human’s hand as mag pistols were wont to. The alien fell to the ground and lay still, except for the twitching of the kangaroo like tail.

  A pair of the aliens hopped toward the human, who pointed the pistol their way and yelled. They ignored his shouts and continued toward him, their body language revealing their violent intent. They moved quickly in their hopping motion, faster than a running man. The pistol bucked three times in rapid succession, and the aliens fell from the top of a leap to hit their feet on the ground and crumple over.