To Well And Back (The Deep Dark Well) (13 page)

They know where I am
, he thought, calling
up a view from his microsats, cursing himself for not having a permanent feed
in place.  He could see the seven orbiting above him from their heat
signature.  And two more groups vectoring toward his position.  He was
confident they wouldn’t be able to pick up his heat trail.  His engines were of
the most efficient design possible to his tech base, fusion bottles with
wormhole heat sinks pulling all waste radiation away.  And the near body
temperature vegetation masked what little heat he did put out.  They might be able
to pick him up with a clear line of sight, if they were in close.  Through the
canopy they didn’t have a chance.

The explosions caught
him off guard, again.  They were dropping semi-smart bombs through the canopy,
set to explode when they hit something solid while avoiding the trees on the
way down.  The first crumps were at a short distance, but came closer, like a
giant walking the Earth.  In an instant there were explosions all around
Watcher and his small robotic command.  Missiles streaked through the canopy to
send rivers of flame running down the trucks of trees.

Watcher was in a
well-insulated vehicle, but knew that his ears would be bleeding were he
outside the tank and not in his armor.  The ground rumbled underneath, and soon
he lost contact with the vehicle behind his.  He tapped into a vid feed from
another tank and saw that a pair of bombs had struck that unresponsive
vehicles, and it was now a burning wreck. 
They’re using thousand kilo armor
piercers
, he thought, which not even his armored vehicles could handle.  He
had thought about bringing truly heavy armor on this mission, but it would have
taken much longer to put them together at the pyramid, and he wouldn’t have had
the capacity to carry so many combat bots.  Now he regretted that decision as
he thought of how it might kill him before he could get to Pandi.

The jungle was aflame
all around him now, and the bombs continued to rain down. 
How long can they
keep this up?
he thought, then felt his heart fall as he saw more squadrons
approaching on his satellite take. 
As long as they need to.

And then a pair of
explosions rocked his tank up, and a third started to tip it over.  Watcher
grabbed on to a hand hold and pulled himself tight against the wall, wondering
if he would make it through this low tech but effective attack.  He didn’t see
the heavy box of crystalline matrix batteries that had not been sufficiently
secured.  But his head felt them as they slammed hard into his bald pate.  And
then he felt nothing as blackness closed over him.

*     *     *

Admiral Miklas Gerasi
groaned as he watched the first attack run on the stealthed vehicles that left
four of his atmospheric craft falling into the jungle while another exploded in
midair.  He pumped a fist as he saw the hit on one of the tanks that sent it
burning through the canopy toward the ground.  And then the rest of the
vehicles dipped down through the upper canopy and out of sight.

“Bomb the hell out of
that area,” yelled Gerasi into the com link.  He looked over at the Marine Liaison
Officer.  “Get a company transported to that location and scour the area.”

“What about the airlift
to block the Suryans?” said the Marine officer, a scowl on his face.

“Bring in two companies
and send the birds back for the third company,” said the Admiral, his voice
rising to a yell.  “Must I do all the thinking around here?”  Gerasi fumed for
a moment, not even thinking about the implications of his last statement, that
his Dogmatic Church did not want adherents who thought for themselves, and as a
consequence had soldiers who couldn’t come up with an original idea.

The aircraft circled
over the jungle on the screen, dropping bombs that fell through the canopy,
only to send blasts of dirt and flame back up.  “We lost him,” came the voice
of the squadron commander over the net, the acting commander, as the original
had been downed on the first pass.

“Keep pounding that
area until you are out of ordnance,” ordered the Admiral, looking at two
repeater screens that showed a pair of squadrons on the way.  And minutes
behind them was a dedicated bomber squadron, each plane carrying five times the
bomb load of the fighters.

They really complicated
matters for me
,
thought the Admiral of the dwellers on the
Donut
. 
I could have
already bagged the Suryans if not for their interference.  But if I can bag
them as well the
Donut
is open to us.  And with the
Donut
, the
Universe
.  The Admiral continued to look at the screens showing the ongoing
attack on the hidden tanks, dreaming of his people and his faith spreading across
the Galaxy, making it a fitting home for humans, and a graveyard for everyone
else.

*     *     *

Pandora looked at the
images playing across her helmet’s heads up display as a smile played across
her face.  The Nation Marines were walking right into her parlor, and she was
about to slap them, hard.  Her eight robots were all in position, stealthed as
much as possible and using the foliage to blend in.  Her smile turned to a
frown as she checked her particle beam rifle.  It still had plenty of power in
its crystal matrix battery pack.  But the last proton storage mag was inserted
into the rifle, and it only showed half full.

Well, I’ve still got
the laser pistol fully charged
, she thought, patting the butt of that weapon,
then reaching over her shoulder to touch the hilt of her katana. 
And this
here bitch don’t need a recharge.  At least I don’t think it does
.  She
still wasn’t clear on how the blade worked, something to do with other
dimensions and resonances.  That it worked, and worked well, was enough for
her.  And it would be enough for those she introduced to its infinitely sharp
blade as well. 
And I’ve got the built in suit weapons if it comes to that
,
she thought.  They weren’t near as powerful as the carried weapons, but they
would do in a pinch.

She checked the HUD
again, noting that the red dots were almost all in the trap.  There were still
a lot of them outside the box, and the ones that were moving into what would
soon be flanking position worried her the most.  She couldn’t do much about them
at this point, except stay flexible and react to their moves.  While hoping
they reacted to hers in a predictable manner.

Oh shit
, she thought, as one
of the red dots drifted to the side, right toward one of her robots.  The bots
were very good at hiding, with their cammo systems rendering them essentially
invisible.  But they were still solid objects, and someone walking into one
could not fail to notice that it was there.  The red dot stopped, and she
switched her display to a vid of the trooper, who crouched down and was staring
at something about where her bot was.  She zoomed in on the Marine’s face
plate, and could see his lips moving through the plastisteel armor.  She
glanced up at the smaller screen toward the top of her HUD, and saw that more red
dots were moving that way, quickly.

No plan survives
contact with the enemy.  Pandora knew this, it had been hammered into her head
by Watcher and the learning programs she had used to gain knowledge of military
operations, both naval and land.  She thought quickly about what to do, and her
mouth formed one word to send out to her bots.  “Fire.”

The unfortunate marine
who had first spotted her robot was the first to die, an angry red particle
beam blasting through his faceplate to destroy the face, then the brain behind
it.  The trooper fell backwards from the force of the strike, his body lying on
the ground while steam and smoke rose in a small column from his helmet.  The
robot immediately started tracking another target, firing as that trooper went
to a kneeling position and pulled his rifle to his shoulder.

All of the robots
opened fire, blasting away with particle beams, lasers and grenade launchers at
the eighty-six troopers who had been caught in the box.  It was a deadly
crossfire, one in which the bots did not have to worry about their own misses
hitting them, as they were all linked into a coherent system.  Pandora was the
reserve, there to contain anything that might break out of the box, or in. 
Watching her HUD see saw a dozen dots shift to the left, around the flank of
her ambush. 
Crafty SOB
, she thought.  Someone over there was quick on
his feet, and was directing an attack to the flank.  Even as she moved she
could see one of her robots go off the grid, killed by the flankers.

Pandora split her
attention between the overall display, the vid feeds that were coming in from
the bots, and her real time surroundings.  She still wondered about her mental
abilities since Watcher had augmented her.  Nowhere near in his class, but
still something greater than the humans of her time.  She constantly had to
remind herself that superior did not mean superhuman.  And now she moved
swiftly and cautiously toward the flanking attack, reminding herself of the
same.

Her first target didn’t
see her coming.  She brought the particle beam rifle up to her shoulder,
feeling the vibrations of the accelerator chamber through her armor, and
sighted in on the Marine.  The rifle bucked in her hand, and the beam went just
where she had intended, planning for the recoil.  The side of the trooper’s
helmet melted and a hole appeared in the sagging alloy.  With a tremor in his
legs the man dropped to the ground, his weapon falling with him.

Another turned toward
her, swinging what looked like a heavy laser beam her way.  Her particle beam
cut the weapon in half as it plowed a gash through the armor and killed the
man.  Pandi fired two more shots at another trooper, missing with the first,
hitting him in the arm with the second.  The man folded up on himself and hit
the ground, what would have been a superficial wound with most other weapons
manifesting into a mortal injury as megajoules of heat were pumped into his
body.

Something struck the
front of the woman’s face plate, spranging away and leaving a small scuff mark
on the superhard material.  A couple of more rounds struck, and Pandi ducked
down, then prone, returning fire.  A tree exploded outward as its sap
superheated under the particle beam, then some bushes caught fire from another
blast, before she finally found her target and burned through armor and man in
a fast blast.

Pandora checked her HUD
and cursed again.  The enemy had started rolling up her other flank as well,
and there were only four functional robots left.  She thought about ordering
them to retreat, but by the position of the red dots they would be under fire
the whole way.  Something exploded near her, throwing dirt over her armor.  She
jumped up, continuing the motion on grabbers that brought her into the air,
then fired at the grenadier she spotted in an instant, burning him down and
setting the reloads on his suit into sympathetic detonations from the heat.

And I was always such a
peaceable woman
,
she thought as she floated through the air and took out another Marine, then
dropped to the ground as rounds began to crack around her.  Three Marines came
at her, and she burned down two before the third, another grenadier, got a
string of micro-grenades off and into her armor.

The small explosives
did not penetrate, but they did damage to her outer stealth systems.  And a
couple hit the particle beam rifle in about the only place they could harm it,
right on the control panel to the lower right of the sight.  Pandora pulled the
trigger and nothing happened.  She pulled again, looking at the rifle, and
cursed as she saw the scarred area on the receiver assembly.  With another
curse she threw the weapon to the ground, then pulled the laser pistol from its
holster in a motion that would have been the envy of an old west gunfighter. 
She squeezed the trigger as the barrel tracked up the body of the man,
exploding some ordnance on his belt.  The beam hit his faceplate and the man
pulled his arms over his eyes.  But the beam did little real damage to the
armor, which had reflective countermeasures built in.

Pandora turned to
escape, triggering her suit grabbers and rising above the ground while pushing
her forward.  Someone got her in his sights at that moment, and a hyper-v
missile flew out of nowhere.  It struck on her lower right leg, taking the
grabber unit off the suit like a surgeon’s scalpel.  The suit unbalanced and
flipped over, striking hard the trunk of a tree.  Pandi woofed out the air in
her lungs and panicked for a moment.  The laser went flying from her hand, and
she twisted in the air with rounds spranging off her suit.  Her HUD showed that
a laser had contacted her briefly, but her reflective surfaces shrugged off the
light amp weapon.

I’m gonna get killed up
here
,
she thought, trying to right her suit for a moment, then giving up and cutting
the grabbers.  She fell the twenty meters to the ground, the remaining grabbers
cutting in for an instant before she hit and bleeding her velocity.  Shots
continued to crack by or ricochet from her suit with thawking noises.  She was
up on her feet in an instant, running as fast as the suit would take her
through some brush.  The suit vibrated for an instant, and the sonics warning
came up on her display.  But the sonic stunner hadn’t been made that would get
through this armor.