The Deep Dark Well (38 page)

Her gazed moved to the
side of the crystalline structure as she passed through.  It looked like
nothing she had ever seen, shimmering with the hard fields that helped to hold
the structure together.  So different from the outer surface it presented to
the Universe.

It took her a minute to
pass through the thickness of the hull.  Thicker than the heaviest warship. 
She had thought it might be wiser to attack through a regular hatch, where only
a thin section would have needed to be penetrated.  Watcher had thought
otherwise.  He felt that there still might be active defenses around a hatch. 
She had agreed it was not worth the risk.

The suit bucked
slightly as she left the hole and entered the interior of the station.  A relay
had been launched from the suit, she knew, to affix itself to the hull and
allow her constant secure communication with her ship, and through her ship to
Watcher.  The map of this section of the interior was displayed on her visor. 
Two kilometers in would bring her to the detonator.  Two kilometers as the
laser flew.  And the map showed no such direct route.

Their plans had taken
this into account.  A blast of negative matter took her through the thick
bulkhead to her front.  The other three walls were much thinner, and succumbed
to small sprays of negative matter.

“I’m in the corridor,”
she reported to Watcher.  The corridor that ran inward at an angle, and would
give the quickest access to the detonator.   She thrust along through the
vacuum of the corridor, her eyes locked to the moving dot on the visor map.

She stopped where
indicated, a gauntleted hand pushing the access panel that opened the large
floor hatch.  The nearly empty room lay above, a scattering of boxes, crates
and lockers doing little more than giving the room scale.  She thrust through
the room to the ceiling, a hundred and fifty meters closer to her goal. 
Checking her negative matter load brought a frown to her lips.  She only had a
quarter of a full load, and she would need that at the target.

Pandi dropped back to
the floor of the room, near a small cluster of metal crates.  Her eyes
appraised their cover, and she thought they would be satisfactory. 
Enough
to bet my life on?
  She knelt behind the crates and switched the load on
her particle beam.  A wide spread of thinly arrayed particles.  A squeeze of
the trigger sent the particles toward the far wall.  She ducked behind the
crates an instant before antimatter contacted matter.

Bright light flared in
the room.  The deck rumbled with the force of the blast.  She could feel the
vibrations of metal crates as thick pieces of bulkhead slammed into them. 
There was no other indication of the detonation in the vacuum of the chamber. 
Pandi checked the rad meter on the HUD.  Not a huge dose, but she had taken
some gamma rays.  A two edged sword to be sure.  She would let the medbot in
the ship scrub her cells when this was all over.

Looking over the crate
she saw the ragged hole in the ceiling.  More than big enough to allow her
through.  With that thought she was on her feet, lifting the suit on repellers
and thrusting through up to the hole.

She started as she
cleared to the other side, wishing she had carried at least some other weapons
with her.  But the robots didn’t move.  They were frozen in macabre aspects of
motion, or lying frozen on the floor.  But the thought remained with her.  It
would have taken too long to adjust her particle beam where it would have taken
them out without the blast catching her as well.  After all, it was still on
the setting that had blown a more than human sized hole in a thick bulkhead.

“Get a move on,” came
Watcher’s voice over the com link.  “I doubt the computer is just sitting
around in confusion.”

Pandi moved out, down
another long hall, this one running below the corridor to the detonation
control center.  She shook her head in disgust at her behavior.  Time was of
the essence.  The computer must be rushing forces here at the moment, and there
was no telling when she would run into them.

This was it
, she thought, as she
came to the last hatch.  This would not open with the push of an access plate. 
Thick and armored with superstrong materials, even a full tank of negative
matter wouldn’t get her through.

The charges fit along
the rim of the hatch just as planned. 
Everything seems to be going so well
,
she thought, a feeling of apprehension running through her. 
Too well
. 
She backed along the corridor, keeping her eyes scanning the corridor.  When
she was far enough along she triggered the detonation.  Antimatter charges blew
the hatch out of its casing, into the room beyond.

Pandi flew through the
opening, a smile on her face as she saw the bulkhead beyond which the detonator
lay.  Many different symbols of danger were placed on that wall, all saying
get
away fool
.  Thirty meters of superhard materials separated her from the
antimatter charge within.  As she thought of the thousands of tons of volatile
material beyond, even that thickness seemed paper-thin.  And without the
magnetic bottle holding it in place this thickness would be as paper.  It was
meant to keep the curious or malevolent out, not the destructive force in.

    Something hit her
hard in the shoulder as she was staring at the wall.  She careened across the
room, hitting hard on the opposite wall, the suit cushioning the impact.  She
focused and rose just as the combat robot reached her, its hand swinging like a
hammer at her helmet, flooring her in an instant.

She rolled on the
floor, not an easy task in the heavy suit, as she brought her rifle to bear. 
She was relieved to see it was one of the smaller, man sized units.  One of the
big monsters would have probably crushed her with its first blow, superhard
armor notwithstanding. 

She thanked all the
powers of the universe that she had taken the time to reset the rifle to a more
staid configuration.  The head of the robot exploded in a bright flash, as
pieces of metal struck the suit with a clang.

“You better watch it,”
said Watcher over the link.

“Has the computer
already set its minions loose around here?”

“No.  That was a local
defense robot, set here to guard the detonator ages ago.  I can’t promise there
won’t be more.”

“OK,” she said as she
set the rifle in place, clamping it to the proper angle of the wall.  “I’m
hurrying.”

But not too much
, she thought.  She
didn’t want to go up in the biggest explosion ever experienced by a
twenty-first century human.  She double-checked the rifle settings, making sure
that the proper depth of penetration would be achieved.  Timer set, she pulled
the trigger and set the drill in motion.

Her fingers flew as she
disconnected the rifle from the clamps she had left in place.  The ranging
system on her helmet fed the figures of the hole back to her.  Twenty-nine
meters of perfect roundness.  Without a trace of dust or other mess.  She
marveled again at the utility of negative matter.  It would have come in handy
many times in her trips through the Kuiper Belt.

The two meter long rod
penetrator slid neatly into the hole that had been made just to fit.  The
charge was secured by the rifle clamps she had left in place.  A quick push of
the button and the countdown began. 
Ten minutes
, she thought, as she
hurried out of the corridor.  Plenty of time to get back to the ship and to a
safe distance.

She retraced her route
in half the time it had taken her to penetrate.  But then the route was
completely open.  Everything was going to plan, until she hit the first of the
opposition.

*    *    *

Dammit
, thought Watcher, as
he checked the display again.  A little more than five minutes to go, and her
signal had gone like a fire in vacuum. 
Where the hell is she
?  A quick
analysis of the signal over the relay gave him the answer.  She was being
jammed.  Something had interrupted her journey, and there was no way he could
get to her in time.  The countdown went under five minutes, as he prayed to the
gods he didn’t believe in that she could fight her way free.

*    *    *

Pandi was able to use
antimatter while the robots approached, blowing several of them to pieces, the
pieces taking out several more as fast moving shrapnel.  When a piece flew by
her helmet at a blur she decided they were too close and switched to negative
matter.  Enough for a few shots, she had to conserve her ammunition.  The
robots operated under no such constraints.  They blazed away with accelerator
rifles, rounds bouncing from her armor with heavy impacts.

She squeezed her eyes
shut as a round struck her faceplate, as if that would protect her vision if
the round penetrated.  All it did was allow a robot to get closer to her.  Her
eyes opened to see the creature aiming a rifle straight at her faceplate from
close range.  Her rifle came up even as she noted the small crack in the
faceplate.  A shot this close would probably finish the penetration, and open
her to the vacuum beyond if not killing her outright.

The robot stopped with
the rifle aimed at her faceplate.  For a quick second she wondered what was
keeping it from finishing her.  But it couldn’t kill her, could it.  Disabling
or capturing her might be by the rules, but the robot knew it would kill her
with this shot, and was frozen into inaction.

The shell of the robot,
a utility model she noted, opened up as if a laser was cutting through it, as
she brought the beam of negative matter up from its crotch to its head.  She
was back on her feet in an instant and around the robot, as rounds continued to
bounce from her armor. 
They might not be able to kill me outright
, she
thought.  But by delaying her they might accomplish the same thing.

Her last three shots of
antimatter cleared out three of the four robots still blocking her path.  She
boosted the suit into the last; knocking it into the wall as she continued
beyond before it could recover enough to make a grab at her.

The hole in the outer
hull was just ahead.  She tried to check the heads up display, but there was
nothing.  The shot to the faceplate had knocked out the HUD, and she had no
means of checking the timer.  Her fingers switched the weapon to antimatter as
she turned to check her six.  Robots by the dozens came after her, their rifles
blazing away as they tried to disable her suit.

Pandi ordered the suit
to accelerate backwards through the hole as she opened up with the particle
beam, hosing down the robots with furious fire that disintegrated them in
place.

“Pandi,” came the voice
over the com link as she exited the station.  “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she replied
breathlessly, even as she jogged the suit to the side to avoid the blast coming
through the hole.  “How much time do I have?”

“Thirty seconds.  Move
your ass.”

“I won’t be able to get
to the controls in time,” she cried as she thrust toward the ship.  Both
hatches were open before her, and she realized Watcher was using the wormhole
link to remote the ship.

“Just get in and grab
on,” he said.  “I’ll take it from there.”

The hatches closed
behind her as she entered the ship.  She called up a holo display as the ship
accelerated along the underside of the
Donut
, moving at emergency thrust
away from the danger zone.

The display switched
back to the skin of the
Donut
, locking onto the area of interest to them
all.  The countdown clock sped along at the bottom of the holo as she watched. 
One switched to zero, and she gripped the wall handholds awaiting she knew not
what.

*    *    *

The antimatter shape
charge went off, matter and antimatter combining in a directional blast,
pushing the superhard long rod penetrator inward, down the hole that contained
it.  Penetrator and the accompanying jet of superhot gases sliced through the
last meter of material as if it wasn’t there.  Through the material and the
ceramic magnetic field coating beyond. 

The tip of the long rod
penetrator pushed through the magnetic bottle.  Only the smallest amount of
matter touched the antimatter beyond the bottle before the explosion took
place.  Not a very big explosion at that, blowing the remainder of the long rod
penetrator back through the ceramic material, but also pushing some antimatter
out of the bottle, to meet with ceramic material, building to another explosion
while a small section of the magnetic bottle blinked out of existence.  The
pressure from the rest of the field squirted even more antimatter out of the
opening, building to an even larger explosion.  Within microseconds the rest of
the containment field failed, and antimatter rushed to contact matter all along
the large cylinder that contained it.  The cylinder was not made to contain
that kind of force.  Nothing material was, and the antimatter was compressed
inward by enormous forces, then exploded outward throughout that section of the
station.

Within seconds a flare
of sun hot fire and tetratons of blast wave were engulfing the nearby
processing unit of the station central computer.  The wave of heat and pressure
rolled along the path of least resistance as it had been meant, searing through
the crystalline structure of the memory core.