The Deep Dark Well (41 page)

Her own drive kept her
from following them on their paths.  If she were killed the drive would
eventually die from lack of power, and she would probably take a long fall into
the black hole itself. 

Pandi boosted forward
on her drive, and the debris began to clear ahead and give her a good view of
the excavated chamber.  Her ship had blown out a cavity of four or five
kilometers in width, and at least ten kilometers in depth. 
It will have to
take me most of the way to the computer core
, she thought, though her radar
found a solid wall of material ahead, with no obvious openings.

Pandi checked her
position as she moved ahead, readying her own weapons for the continuance of
the assault.  She sprayed the ceiling ahead from a distance; the beam spread
enough to open a large hole.  Perfectly she slid through the new opening as she
decelerated.  Indications were that the space ahead was enclosed.

The suit came to rest
in the hall.  She had blasted half way through the next ceiling as well, and
her thought was to continue through the way she was going.  But first she set
charges on the floor behind her.  If she had to get out she would have to get
out fast, and might not be able to maneuver like she had on the way in.

Another blast and she
was through the next ceiling, the air blowing out into the vacuum.  She set
more charges while she checked her position.  The suit’s on-board computer
system was keeping track of her position probably as well as any system could. 
But she missed the contact with Watcher, advising her along the way.  With
Hellfire
gone there was no way to contact him at the moment, though if she knew him that
might just change.

Get moving
, she thought.  As she
moved up into the large room she had entered she checked her inertial guidance
system through the suit’s computer.  Less than a hundred meters ahead, the edge
of her target, where she could release the
special
and get out.

“Pandora Latham,” said
the voice of the station computer.  “I know you are there.”

“Great.  I’m so happy
you’re still paying attention to me.”

“You do not have to do
this, you know,” it said.  “We can work together.”

“Keep talking,” she
said.  “You might just convince me.”

Something hit into her
left arm, hard.  Pain lanced through the assaulted body part.  She could hear
the sound of air hissing out as she thanked her luck that the impact was below
a suit tourniquet.  The pressure equalized.  Her next thought was to get moving
and not provide a shocked, standing target.

The suit zoomed back as
she pivoted and brought her weapon to bear.  Her left arm refused to work, and
she noted the fact, filing it away for future reference as she took care of the
here and now.  The here and now included a trio of robots, two firing away at
her with small accelerator weapons, the third recharging the chamber of a
heavier weapon.  Armor piercer, she knew.  She had been lucky it hit where it
had, having to go through her arm and two sections of armor before being
stopped by her side torso armor.  But a straight on shot would surely take her
out.

The negative matter
beam cut into the robot with the heavy, annihilating the center section of the
weapon and blasting a slot through the robot as she moved the beam up.  A
couple of follow up shots, her aim off a little having to handle her weapon one
handed, took out the other two.

Have to keep my head
about me
. 
She tried to ignore the pain in her arm, realizing that the tourniquet seal
would kill her arm after a while.  But she had to worry about the rest of her.

She blasted through the
next ceiling and set her charges one handed, sweat pouring off of her forehead
while she wished she could get to it and wipe it away.  The suit environmental
system was good, but this perspiration had nothing to do with heat, everything
to do with agony.  And she couldn’t afford the luxury of a suit-administered
hypo.  Her mind had to stay clear, and that was not the way to do it.

*    *    *

Watcher cursed to
himself yet again as he tried to piggyback a signal through to Pandi.  The last
he had seen of her was a glimpse of her suit going into the station as the ship
camera rotated to try and keep track, failing as the ship spun under it on its
way to destruction.  She had gotten in, but how far?  And was she still on the
assault, or the defensive, or neither?

There was very little
he could do to help her until she deployed the
special
, but not knowing
was eating a hole in his heart.  And the computer was still blocking all his
attempts to access any of the resources of the station beyond the control of
this center.

Well
, he thought,
I
could fire up the power system
.  That  was still under his control.  His
mind centered on the system before him.  He ordered the switching of the
magnetic field to full power, turning the black hole again into an enormous
electrical generator.  The computer would know he was about to open another
wormhole.  He just had to hope that it didn’t guess where, or figure out how to
stop it from doing its job.

*    *    *

Just ahead in this
large chamber she could see the warning signs on the wall ahead.  The detonator
chamber, this one further in than the others, and supposedly evacuated of all
of its antimatter.  Her target area, as far as she was supposed to go.  At this
point she was just a delivery person, and the delivery only needed to be made
for her to accomplish her mission.

Doors swung open as
those who wished to interrupt the delivery entered.  Dozens of them, all of the
smaller combat models, wicked looking rifles of unfamiliar design in their
hands.

“Stop, Pandora Latham,”
said the station computer over its com link.  “You will be allowed to go no
further.”

“You’re not able to
kill me,” she said.  “At least not directly.”

“I do not need to kill
you to stop you,” it said.  “These robots are equipped with high powered gamma
ray lasers.  They will cut through your suit in less than a second.”

“Killing me?  You know
your programming won’t allow that.”

“Not killing you,” it
said, “if I disable you by amputating your limbs.  You will survive.  In great
agony, but you will survive.  One day I may even allow you to receive a
regrowth procedure.  One day.”

“And why haven’t you
already done it?” she asked, hoping she knew the answer.

“I would prefer to not
damage you any more than necessary,” it answered, and she knew it was lying. 
It thought she was carrying some kind of powerful weapon on her that she would
use to destroy it.  And a stray shot might set it off.  It was probably trying
to initiate a thorough scan on her now, a project her suit would try to defeat
as long as possible.  And it was probably trying to puzzle out just what kind
of weapon she was carrying.

And it was secure in
the knowledge that nothing she could carry in her suit would do the job.  Even
if she were made out of antimatter, the most powerful concentrated energy
source known, she would not be able to defeat the armor ahead of her.  But it
had to think she had some kind of plan, though its machine lack of imagination
was hindering its thought processes.  And anything at all that puzzled it was
to her advantage.

“Looks like a standoff
to me,” she said, thinking of how to open the package before it took her arms
and legs off.

“I am curious,” it
said.  “Just what have you with you that could blast through over sixty meters
of superhard materials, and deliver a death blow to thousands of cubic
kilometers of station?”

“We don’t mean to
destroy you,” she said as she looked over the robots that kept their weapons
steadily on her.  “That wouldn’t have served our purposes nearly as well as
taking control of you.  After all, you are still a perfectly functional device,
if we could get rid of your personality.”

“And how did you plan
on taking control of me?  Through an implanted program of some kind?  I would
be able to defeat any attempt at reprogramming.”

“Then I guess you have
nothing to worry about.  Especially since I never made it into your processor
in the first place.”

“And how did you plan
to reprogram me?”

“With this small
quantum computer in my belt pouch.”

“Another of those
damned things,” it said, its intonation like a spit of the words.  She had
hoped it would hate the kind of computer that was to supersede it.  Its
pseudo-personality was very well developed, and very predictable.

“Toss the thing on the
floor,” it ordered.  “I will order one of my robots to destroy it.  Then you
will accompany them to a holding area where we will begin your reeducation.”

“And if I refuse?”

“The robots will take
you to the holding area as a quadruple amputee, and the reeducation process
will be much more painful.”

Pandi nodded her head
as she pulled the strap holding the pouch to her belt and released the
package.  Her good hand gripped it as she looked around, as if seeking an
escape.

“Nothing cute now,” it
said.  “Just toss the box onto the floor.  I think we will then follow with
anything else that can come off of the suit.  No use taking chances that you
might have another surprise on your person.”

Pandi tossed the box on
the floor gently, well away from her, as she waited for the computer’s next
move.

“Wormholes,” it said. 
She jerked slightly at the reference.

“Your friend the
Watcher was still trying to generate wormholes.  I think he was still trying to
attack my machinery with gamma radiation.  Which of course would have been
deadly for you.  I guess you never know who your friends are.”

“I guess I’ll have to
be more careful in the future,” she said with a one armed shrug.

“We will make sure of
it,” said the computer, as one of the robots moved his weapon to cover the small
box sitting on the middle of the floor.  “I wonder if it will feel fear as it
is destroyed.”

The box vaporized as
the invisible beam of radiation intersected it. 

“And so it dies,” said
the computer.  “That which was built to replace me.”

The shimmering mirror
shape grew swiftly from where the few solid remains of the box sat.  Robots
jerked their weapons toward it.  They might have been firing away at it for all
she knew, with the soundless, invisible destructive beams.  If so they would do
nothing to affect it.

“Get out of there,”
yelled Watcher’s voice over the com link.  Pandi knew he had to be pumping a
signal through the wormhole.  But soon the wormhole would be anchored in a
place from which no signal could come.

Pandi pushed the
detonator switch on her gauntlet, blasting open the holes behind her just a bit
wider.  With a thought her suit was accelerating backwards, away from the
robots.  Away from this chamber.

“Stop her,” yelled the
computer through the com link. A robot took aim, raising his weapon at her. 
Before it could make another move it rose from the floor and slowly moved
toward the mirror in the center of the room.  It built up velocity quickly as
it was sucked into the surface.  The other robots joined it, sucked from the
floor in blurs of motion as the force of the pull built up. 

Pandi saw that her
motion was slowing, even though the suit should have still been accelerating
out of the station.  She could feel the pull increase through the cells of her
body.  As the other mouth moved closer to the surface of the hole the pull
would increase, until it entered the event horizon, at which time there would
be no escape.

Her hand reached up and
pulled the emergency boost, kicking in a hundred gees of acceleration.  She
pulled away from the room in a blur, shooting through the station and out into
space.  The station receded as she sped away.  The power of the inertial
compensators suddenly faded, just long enough for her to black out for a
moment.

*    *    *

The wormhole opened to
contain the entire chamber.  Walls of superstrong materials shuddered, vibrated
and crumpled like thin foil, disappearing through the gate to the end of the
known Universe, down the rabbit hole.  The wormhole moved inward under the
direction of the controller, expanding all the while.  The computer barely had
time for a couple of trillion operations, thinking about every possibility in
that time to get away from advancing doom.  A trillion operations were not
enough, as the processor was pulled from its mounts and into the wormhole,
collapsing into neutronium and beyond.

The mouth of the
wormhole ate into the computer core, sucking cubic kilometers into the hole,
then tens of cubic kilometers, then hundreds, disappearing in seconds to a
place of no return.

As suddenly as it had
been born the most terribly powerful tornado in the history of the Universe
died.  The mirror contracted into a microscopic hole, and then disappeared
entirely, gone forever.

Systems on the station
shut down from lack of control.  Local systems took over much of the job, but
Watcher was kept busy for a while making the connections to the quantum system
needed to keep everything running smoothly till he could do a thorough job.