To Well And Back (The Deep Dark Well) by Doug Dandridge Read Free Book Online

proper decel profile to come out of hyper well
short of the limit, and decelerate down to point nine light before she entered
the system proper.  From there she would continue to decel into the system
until she was at her attack profile of point seven light, and heading for her
target.
    “Show me the
disposition of the enemy,” she told the ship’s computer, and a holo screen
switched the view from real space to a tactical representation.  Just like
from one of those old movies me and my boyfriends used to pretend to watch
while we were groping , she thought with a smile.  Except that she was
actually paying attention to those old Space Wars movies, as they showed her
dream in full CGI glory.  And here she was.
    What the hell do I
think I’m doing ,
she thought as she tracked the enemy ships on the holo.  I’m not a damned
naval officer.   She thought about that for a moment as she watched the
vector arrows of the first Nation of Humanity force move into the space of the
G2 class star, heading toward the Kingdom of Surya force.  But I guess I’m
the best we have .
    She switched her
attention to the second enemy force, moving from the opposite direction from
the first and timed to reach the Surya base just minutes behind the first.  Catching
them in a nutcracker, and wiping them out before they have a chance.  And they
can’t even see them coming until they turn off that damned dangerous drive of
theirs.
    The Nation ships
actually destroyed the space in front of the ship, the space that photons had
to traverse to deliver their information.  And the photons disappeared with
that space, rendering the ships invisible from the front.  The Supersystem was
filled with probes that reported back to the station by wormhole gates. 
Information that was transmitted to Avenger , giving her a glimpse at
ships traveling effectively faster than light.  Their drives also caused
ripples of gravity waves that travelled through all the dimensions of Hyper that
the more advanced Donut vessels used, allowing Pandora’s own sensors to
track the ships by those distortions.
    And they surely can’t
see me traveling hyperluminal, she thought with a smile.  When she slowed down
her light waves would again precede her ship.  If she happened to be generating
any.  The ship’s stealth field absorbed light and did not retransmit it.  And
even ninety-nine point nine percent of her heat was sucked away by the wormhole
heat sink.  The first they would see of Avenger was when she closed to
attack range, and probably only after she opened fire.  Otherwise, even looking
right at her with their sensors they were unlikely to see her.
    Pandora checked her
weapons load, something that Watcher had insisted on her doing as often as
possible before closing to firing range.  She had of course balked at that,
until he pointed that all the elite warriors of the ages were always making
sure their weapons were ready, all the time.  Because all it took was one
misfire to kill a soldier.  So we’ll just have to see that nothing like that
happens to Daddy Carl’s little girl.  And Carl Latham, her father, was long
dust in the earth, not that she cared much for what the hyper religious bastard
had thought then.
    Everything checked out,
and she watched as her velocity dropped to below light and the range closed on
the target.  A few of the enemy ships shifted in formation, and she wondered
for a moment if they might have spotted her.  But after the initial shift there
was no more motion other than straight at their target.
    Pandora thought about
her strategy for another moment while the closing velocity and the distance
dropped.  The particle beam projectors gave her the option of four different
loads, all corresponding to a separate wormhole portal to a different
accelerator loop on the station.  Charged particles were best for hitting
targets with full force, as they didn’t lose velocity in a charge strip, which
wasn’t required for