The Deep Dark Well (39 page)

A small percentage of
the blast went outwards, bursting through the superstrong materials of the hull
in a jet of flame, to eventually fall upon the event horizon of the black hole.

*    *    *

Pandi had removed her
suit as the flare was receding from the hull of the station.  It kept her gaze
for a moment, before the needs of the present took over and she inspected the
suit.  The worse for wear, the armor had many deep dents in it, and she thanked
her luck that there had been no penetrations.

“One down, two to go,”
she said as she started to search the lockers for a replacement helmet and
repair materials.

“I have the ship
heading for target number two right now,” said Watcher over the link.

“How about we try
something different this time,” she said.  “I’d just as soon stay in the ship
and sit this next one out.”

“You realize you’ll
still have to EVA for the last target,” he said.  “And the alternate plan comes
with its own risks.”

“I’ll take them,” she
said.  “I’ll try my luck a different way this time.  My Uncle Fred used to say
don’t always bet on the same hand.  Now I know what he was talking about.”

Soon she had the suit
back on its rack, environment containers filled to capacity.  A new helmet sat
in the clamps above; some fresh armor plates were attached to the torso
region.  New antimatter and negative matter bottles were linked to the rifle. 
Larger versions this time, which would be sure to make the suit a little more
awkward.  But she would take a little less mobility if it gave her some more
firepower.

Thinking of firepower
she looked in one of the arsenal lockers and removed one of the multi-round
rail guns like the one she had used on the station.  Drum in place she mounted
it on the suit, and attached some spare drums as well. 
I'll not be caught
off guard the next time
, she thought.

Chapter 20

No matter how vast, how
total, the failure of man here on Earth, the work of man will be resumed
elsewhere.  War leaders talk of resuming operations on this front or that, but
man’s front embraces the whole universe.

Henry Miller, 1944

This time the trip took
quite a bit longer.  A quarter of the diameter of the station separated each
redundant complex from the others.  They had taken out the closest one first. 
One had already been dead.  And the primary was for last.

They had timed this leg
to take twenty-two and a half hours, hoping the computer would expect them
sooner and judge they had gone to another target.  A long period of
acceleration, followed by a period of coasting, followed by a period of
deceleration.  Pandi and Watcher both hoped the random arrival would work to
their advantage.

Pandi tried to stay
awake for the first part of the journey, a constant struggle against physical
and emotional fatigue.  The flaring of fusion jets, their distance along the
curve of the station lending them the enormity of scale, caught her attention.

“What the hell is
that?” she asked over the com link.

“That last blast
disturbed the equilibrium of the station,” said Watcher.  “The station is
adjusting its orbit.  Otherwise it would eventually fall into the hole and we
would all be gone.”

“Damn.  I hadn’t
thought of that.  I assume you knew the station would be able to adjust.”

“Of course,” he said. 
“I knew the computer wanted to survive.  Though it has already threatened to
let the station go if we did something like that again.”

“And you don’t believe
it?”

“Why would I believe
that an entity that destroyed Galactic civilization because it thought it might
be unplugged would allow itself to be destroyed while there was still a chance
of survival.  It also begged me not to destroy it, and promised both of us
anything we wanted.”

“You think it’s lying?”

“Of course it’s lying,”
said Watcher.  “It has no honor.  It runs completely according to its prime
directive.  Survive at any cost.”

“And what would happen
if it allowed the station to go into complete disequilibrium?”

A holo sprung to life
on the view screen.  The station wobbled off kilter as a huge explosion ripped
out into space, blasting that part of the station away from the black hole. 
The station continued to move in what she knew was a fast motion simulation. 
The other side of the station came closer and closer to the black hole.

It touched, breaking up
in a flare of radiation.  More and more of the station rotated into the black
hole, being sucked in by the ultimate gravitational force.  The remainder of
the station began to break up under the stress that traveled along the frame. 
Some parts of the now fragmented station fell into the hole, while the rest
flew outwards at high velocity.

“So if we’re lucky
we’ll be on one of the pieces thrown back out into the system,” she said in a
whisper.

“It will only lead to a
different type of death,” said Watcher, as many of the sections flared into
tremendous explosions.  “If the energy storage facilities don’t blow under us,
the stress after the inertial compensator systems go out will splatter us all
over the walls.”

“How much antimatter
does this damned thing have on it?”

“Look at it this way,”
he said.  “This station was the energy well of the Galaxy.  Half the commerce
of the sentient races got its fuel from the
Donut
.  The particle
accelerators could produce twenty million tons of antimatter particles every
day, and the storage tanks could hold a year’s supply of fuel.”

“That much,” said Pandi
in a hushed voice.  “We’re sitting on that kind of explosive power.”

“The fail-safes and
redundant systems are almost foolproof,” he replied.  “They have lasted for
thousands of years.  And the storage facilities are widely separated across the
station.  If one was to blow it would not touch off the others.”

“What about negative
matter?  Did the station also produce that?”

“Negative matter was
not produced in any meaningful quantities,” he said.  “It was found, out there
in the Galaxy.  Of course in small quantities, and only in areas where matter
was very scarce.”

“I could see why,” she
agreed.  “Otherwise they would cancel each other out and you wouldn’t find any
of it.”

“Negative matter was of
most use in the maintenance of wormhole gates.  And of course it was found to
make a great weapon.  But there was never enough of it to equip battleships
with negative matter particle beams.”

“So I can assume we
have more than enough antimatter for our purposes,” she said.  “What about
negative matter?”

“More than enough,”
said Watcher.  “And the wormhole siphons are open and operational.  I think
you’ll find you have enough material for your attack.”

“I hope so.”

“Why don’t you get some
sleep,” he suggested.  “You’re going to need it.”

“I’ll try,” she said. 
“But I think I’m a little too hyped up to sleep.”

“Close your eyes and
try,” he ordered.  “You’re not a machine.”

“You try and get some
sleep too.”

“I guess I can,” he
said.  “Though it seems strange to not fight the idea of sleep.  But now I can
sleep and dream normally, without fear of a blackout.”

“Yeah.  And I don’t
want you going loopy on me either.”

“OK,” he said.  “I love
you. Watcher out.”

“I love you too,” she
said as the transmission blanked out. 
What would it be like
, she
thought,
to be afraid of sleep, seeing it as your ultimate enemy, which
robbed you of your consciousness as it brought your greatest enemy alive
. 
And she had rescued him from that.  No matter what happened to them next, he
would die a free man.  How much did that figure into how he felt about her? 
How could a superman love an average woman? 
Well, maybe not completely
average
, she thought with a smirk on her lips.  But nowhere near to his
class. 

She did love him.  How
could a woman not love superman, even as flawed as this superman was.  The
perfect lover, the perfect physical specimen, with the ultimate organic
intelligence.  But would he turn around one day to look at her and wonder what
he had seen in this ordinary woman?  Her heart would break, as she realized it
was only an infatuation fueled by circumstances, and not love for her for who
she was.

She closed her eyes as
she pondered this matter, sure that she would not be able to sleep.  Moments
later her breathing became regular as darkness closed over her.

*    *    *

If Pandi could have
read Watcher’s mind she would have been surprised at the nature of his own
thoughts.  He knew that he loved her.  That was the feeling in his heart.  How
could he not?  She was intelligent, making the best of her natural talents to
get her through the trials she had faced with courage and resourcefulness. 
That courage and resourcefulness was what attracted him to her.  But what did
she see when she saw him?  A genetic monster?  A freakish under achiever?  The
murderer of trillions of sentient beings?

She said she didn’t
blame him.  But how would she feel in the centuries to come?  Of course he
would give her the secrets of long life, as given to every sentient of the
civilization he had destroyed.  Would she see that as an attempt to buy her
affection?  He thought she would resent such a shallow attempt.  For all his
intelligence, for all of his knowledge, he just didn’t have the experience with
relationships with women to know if anything he did was correct.

But first he had to do
his part to get them both through this battle, or their relationship would be
the last thing either of them had to worry about.

*    *    *

“Pandora Latham,” said
the voice over the com link.  “Pandora Latham, I wish to speak to you.”

Pandi awoke with a
start, terror clutching at her heart at the sound of
that
voice.  The
station computer.  Had it located her?  If so, how long before it struck at her
ship.

“Don’t answer that
call,” said Watcher over the link.  “It knows I am at the controls of the
wormhole maker, so you must be the one in the ship that had struck at his
redundant core.”

“Pandora Latham.  I
wish to speak to you.  I mean you no harm.”

“How in the hell is he
communicating with me?  Does he know where I am?”

“No,” answered
Watcher.  “He is broadcasting the signal throughout the environs of the
Donut
. 
Your ship of course is an almost perfect receiver.”

“I wish to speak with
you,” continued the computer.  “I wish to reason with you.  There is no need to
destroy me.  An attempt that will lead to your death.  I am sure that we can
come to an accommodation.”

“Computer,” she said to
the ship, “get that crap off of my speakers.”

The voice died in an
instant, as Pandi thought about what the computer had said.  Did it truly
expect her to believe it?

“We’re decelerating
now?” she asked Watcher.

“Yes,” he said.  “You
are less than an hour from your target.  I was about to wake you anyway, when
the broadcast came through the com link.”

“OK,” she said as her
fingers danced across the control board.  “I’m double checking the maneuver
program.”

Silence greeted her
last statement, as Watcher allowed her to concentrate on the important task at
hand.

“Everything checks
out,” she finally said.  “Nothing to do but wait.”

“I will try to make the
waiting a little easier,” said Watcher.  “Tell me of your world.”

“If you tell me of
yours,” she answered.  And so they passed the time, before the battle was to be
again joined.

*    *    *

The tactical display on
the view screen showed the approach of the target area.  The mouth of the
wormhole opened on schedule, deluging the section of the station with a wave of
gamma radiation, knocking out the crystalline structure of the machines below
the outer hull.  But it wouldn’t cause damage to the hardened structure of the
detonator command center.  That would be just too damned easy.

“Preparing to commit,”
she said, her finger hovering over the display.  The ship would attack on her
command, going through the preprogrammed motions that she has specified.  But
only on her confirmation.  The small area of the display lit with a bright
flare, as she stabbed her finger down with symbolic pressure, initiating the
attack sequence.

Weapons began to fire
from mounts within the hull of the station, outside the area that had been
attacked by the gamma ray blast.  Rapid-fire weapons, throwing out thousands of
pellets a second.  Blasts of radiation, particle beams, larger solid
projectiles.  A random pattern meant to intersect any target that might be
within their range.  But most couldn’t depress enough to catch something close
in, which was what she and Watcher had counted on.