The Deep Dark Well (22 page)

"Most
probably," said the tactical officer.  "But even that pales compared
to these."

The holo view changed
yet again, to show another group of vessels in orbit around the station.  These
vessels were also large, though much less so than the previous.  Booms attached
inertialess drive globes to these ships as well, but the pylons of interstellar
drives flew from wings on the sides of the vessels.  Most of the vessels
sported large cargo doors on the bows, similar to the interplanetary ships
examined earlier.  But some, leaner than the others, had banks of tubes and
projector arcs bow and stern.  Warships, they all knew, the largest over six
kilometers in length.

"These would be
the real prize," said the chief tactical officer.  "With the weapons
technology we are sure to find on these ships we would be more than a match for
any of our enemies."

"Do you think they
are manned and active?" asked one of the worried captains.  "I mean,
it’s enough to have to face the automated weapons systems of the
Donut
,
much less a fleet of superior warships."

"I can safely say
they are not functional, nor manned," said Lemasi, switching the holo view
to a close-up of one of the warships.  "You can see for yourself the
obvious beam scaring and hull ruptures of this vessel.  The others have similar
damage, as if they were all attacked and knocked out before they had a chance
to clear for action."

"The legendary
fall of civilization," said Gerasi.  "No one knows how it came
about.  Or who were the precipitators."

"No one that we
know of," said Lemasi.  "Perhaps the answers lie on that
station."

"OK," said
the admiral.  "I think we should go ahead with a saturation attack.  Test
their defenses."

"Do you want to
use the specials?" asked Lemasi. 

"No," replied
the admiral.  "They haven’t been tested this close to a major gravity
well.  Especially one as deep as that one.  We'll wait until the time seems
right.

"No.  All ships
will launch a simultaneous volley of standard torpedoes, at maximum
acceleration.  Wide range beam attacks as well.  Even though they can’t do much
damage, they will arrive before they are detected, and might just burn out some
of those infernal devices’ sensor arrays."

"You really don’t
think the torpedoes will do much damage to the graviton generators?" asked
Captain Midas.

"Maybe enough to
put a couple out of action," said the admiral.  "Hell, I don’t really
think any of them will get through, but it will give us more information about
their defenses.  I’m afraid we’ll have to take a risk I didn’t want to take. 
But we’ll talk about that after we’ve exhausted all other possibilities."

*    *    *

Sometimes the computer
was amazingly fast at bringing up the requested information, just what she
would have imagined in such a technically sophisticated machine.  At other
times it seemed to crawl, but then that was to be expected when some requests
required a thorough search of the 8,000 cubic kilometers of memory core.

What she had found so
far was fascinating.  And having an implant in her head, connecting her
directly to the computer, made understanding even the most difficult of
concepts relatively easy.  Not having the complete system, such as Watcher,
made taking in all the information slower.  He would have accomplished her task
in a fraction of the time.  But the computer only had the most rudimentary of
connections into her language and visual centers.  So holo input, the old
fashioned way, through the eyes, was still necessary.

Watcher had not been a
creation that had sprung directly from the minds of his creators.  No, he had
been the culmination of hundreds of years of trial and error.  The attempt had
been to create homo superior, a new form of human being, who would be superior
to all other forms of intelligent life.

The basic problem had
occurred when mankind had expanded out into the Galaxy and found other forms of
intelligent life.  The human race had always thought of itself as the highest
form of life going.  It was a sobering experience to find equals among the
stars. 

Oh, the human race was
more intelligent than some other species, faster than others, stronger than a
few more.  But all things equaled out.  This race had better memory, that
faster processing speed, another a greater visual system.  Maurids could run
faster and were better armed with natural weapons.  Husteds could jump higher
and were physically stronger than humans.  The list of aliens, hundreds of
species in all, went on, as did their attributes.  And the balance was
maintained. 

The politicians gave
lip service to the community of sentient beings.  The do gooders of the species
really believed it.  But the majority of the race still wanted to believe they
were superior to all other forms of life.  And in the human race majority
rules.  So something had to be done.  Genocide, with the horrors of endless war
that it would entail?  The human race would not stand for such.

So another solution had
to be found.  And making a superhuman, one superior in every attribute the
aliens might possess, one that would take the place of present humans over a
period of time, was that solution.

Pandi felt sick at the
sight of some of the early experiments.  Genetic engineering had been a
neglected science, as far as use on humans was concerned, for thousands of
years.  So the first
improvements
had been true monsters.  She shuttled
through those images quickly, arriving at some of the earlier
successes
. 
These appeared physically normal, with better developed brains than regular
homo sapiens.  But they were not normal.

Psychopaths
.  They had been
psychopathic, without the normal emotions of a human being.  All effort had
been placed into increasing the density of their brain’s neuron system, with
less attention to the endocrine and glandular systems.  These beings had been
cold computing machines.  And many had become the perfect killers.  Great for
the military and special applications.  Not so great for replacing the human
race.  And they hadn’t even turned out to be very good soldiers.  Psychopaths
had no concern for their comrades, no pride in the regiment.  They were only in
it for themselves.

Next had come the
experiments with ESP.  Telepathy, telekinesis, pyrokinesis.  These had turned
out to be dead ends, as the genetic basis of these traits was never found, and
it was never proven that those who claimed to possess them really did.

Pandi’s head began to
hurt again.  She had been at this for hours.  Hours of concentrated thought, of
viewing thousands of images, hundreds of pages of text.  Even with the computer
handling much of the load it was a tiring task.

"Time to take a
break," she told the computer.  "Where is Watcher?"

"Watcher is in his
quarters, viewing the fleet of intruders."

His quarters are just
down the hall
,
she thought, as she walked through the door that swished open at her approach. 
This entire complex of the station, once the station governor’s quarters, was
his secured area.  A couple of quick steps and his door opened before her.  As
she walked in she saw him across the great room, looking at almost a dozen
small vessels on the holo. 
Small is relative
, she thought, realizing
that the ships were probably larger than anything she was familiar with.  They
were just scaled that way to all fit on the screen.

"I’m worried about
these boys," he said as she entered the room.  "I’ve gone over the
records of how Vengeance dealt with the two they sent forward, and I can’t
understand why they are still there."

"Have they done
anything besides sit there?"

"They’ve probed
us, with all kinds of sensor arrays.  And they’ve sent several torpedo probes
in, which the defense systems have destroyed."

"Can you watch
them in real time no matter where they are?" she asked, sitting down next
to him on the side of the couch that faced the holo.

"Only if I can
open a wormhole nearby," he replied.  "I can’t break the laws of time
and space, and light is the limit of speed in normal space.  Luckily they are
all where they were expected to be."

"What if they
weren’t where they were expected to be?  What if they appeared out of whatever
space their drives pulled them through at faster than light?"

"It’s not truly
faster than light," he said with a smile.

"I know
that," she said with a huff.  "I’m not a child.  But it does the same
thing.  So what if they appeared out of whatever space they were in, within
your defensive perimeter."

"I do not think
they would be so foolish to try and use their space destroying drive this close
to a gravity well like the hole we orbit.  That kind of drive does not have the
control needed for close maneuvering.  The most likely outcome would be their
destruction."

"They’re human,
Watcher.  Your recording of Vengeance shows they are.  So don’t ever
underestimate their capacity for foolishness."

Watcher threw his head back
and roared with laughter, tears flowing from his eyes.

"Of course you are
right," he said through his gasps of laughter.  "Humans are the most
foolish of creatures.  And I am one of them.  Better in many ways, but still
not perfect."

"So what if they appeared
within your perimeter?  How would you find them?"

"The old-fashioned
way, I guess," he said.  "I would have to wait until they appeared on
my sensor scans."

"At the speed of
light, right," she said.  "You would have to wait through real time
for the signals to return from your sensor sweeps.  Which could take an hour or
more, round trip."

"True," he
said.  "They would be beyond my reach for as long as they were
invisible
to me.  Though the systems closest to them are instructed to handle situations
such as this."

"Uh oh," said
Pandi, looking close at the holo.  "It looks like they’re up to
something."

*    *    *

"On my command,
volley fire.  Fire!"

At the word from
Gerasi’s lips the
Orca
fired all tubes at the far target of a graviton
projector.  His signal also released the torpedoes from the other ships of the
squadron.  A dozen tubes to the ship, 132 torpedoes rocketing from the magnetic
accelerators that imparted their initial velocity.  A minute passed, then
another volley was fired.  Another minute, another volley, and 396 torpedoes
were on the way.

"That leaves us
with one complete tube load on each ship but this one," said Lemasi, the
chief tactical officer, from his station in the squadron war room.

"Enough for a good
spread if we get into trouble," said Captain Midas.

"But not enough if
we engage in a protracted battle," said the admiral, echoing the unspoken
thoughts of all.  It was a risk, but risks needed to be taken, and this would
likely prove the extent of the enemy defenses.

The torpedoes
accelerated inwards at a thousand gees, building up incredible velocity
quickly.  They began to veer onto independent courses as they approached the
deadline, spreading out, zig zagging, dumping small packets of decoys.   Here a
torpedo flared as one of the graviton beams caught it in flight.  There another
zigged at just the right moment.  The waiting ships began to pick up point
sources of heavy gravity from the misses.

"They are only
hitting on one in twenty of their shots," said the science officer,
following the computer graph of the defensive fire.

Another torpedo flared,
then another.  The pattern spread out even more, as the torpedoes pitted the
random patterns picked by their small computer brains against the technology of
the
Donut
.

"Yes," said
Gerasi.  "But the system is still scoring hits.  And we can’t bring the
ships through with the same kind of acceleration.  Or maneuverability."

Within minutes a
hundred torpedoes had been destroyed.  The rest continued on, switching
vectors, while the computers aboard
Orca
analyzed the patterns of the
torpedoes flights, searching for the most efficient ones to avoid the defensive
system.

It took the system five
minutes to destroy the next hundred torpedoes.  It took ten minutes to destroy
the next hundred.  It picked off a dozen more, then stopped, as the remaining
torpedoes, eighty in all, continued on into the system.

"It’s lost the
track," called the chief tactical officer over his link to the flag
bridge.  "The system doesn’t have unlimited instantaneous transmission and
acquisition ability."

"Now we see how
long it takes the system to acquire the rest of the targets," said the
admiral.

Over the next half hour
several more of the torpedoes were picked off.  Within fifty minutes more were
destroyed.  At an hour, with a flurry of activity, the rest of the torpedoes
were destroyed in flares of light.  None remained to continue toward the
target.

"So once we get
past the wormhole acquisition system," said Lemasi, "we only have to
deal with the standard sensor array of the station."