DOWN THE WELLES
or
Deep in a Hole
- XXVII -
"Picking up radiation." observed Jietlshaiepr. "Dangerous
in long exposure, no more than fifteen minutes outside...
Picking up something in the water... small, distorted, but it's
there... coming in visual range."
The downed SDB was barely afloat. Only the bridge remained
above water with its wind screen blown out by explosive bolts.
The hull was scarred and burned by nuclear fire. The plates bent
and cracked from the crash impact.
"There 'e is!" called Jones. A limp figure in a rubber raft
drifted a hundred meters from the wrecked ship.
Vole's voice came over the suit radio in Zhodani, "I read
him out as semiconscious. There is another life source inside
the ship: roughly I'd say in the engine room. Condition
unconscious, but definitely alive."
Jietlshaiepr thought aloud, "Shtam, set us down. Gresha,
you grab the one in the raft. It's too risky to board that
thing, but..."
Gresha climbed into the airlock as Jietlshaiepr began to
concentrate on psionically feeling her way into the ship. The
ship shuddered slightly as the Gig plowed along the surface.
Gresha tumbled outside and into the water. She sank quickly
under the weight of her battle dress before rising free on her
grav belt. She skimmed the waves to the drifting raft.
It was a five person raft bobbing about like a cork with
it's only occupant. He was sprawled face down in the center of
the raft wearing a vac suit. The helmet lay nearby with a
shattered face plate. The floor of the raft was rolling with
vomit.
"Srrishe, furr sorze gorrar!" translates directly as 'Vile,
personal finger noise.', and idiomatically as 'Bleech!' Gresha
Dipped the pirate in the ocean before she pulled him aloft.
"'ey, Should we bother wi' the other?" wondered Jones. "We
got one, mate?"
"Quiet!" barked Jietlshaiepr. She stared into the wreck
with her eyes closed. Seconds later, she vanished into the
proverbial thin air.
Smith and Jones exchanged glances. Waves beat over the
rolling, half submerged SDB threatening to send it to the bottom
as they washed close to the missing windscreen.
Jietlshaiepr appeared standing on the ships hull as it
rolled. She was lugging a limp figure in a vac suit. She lifted
it in her arms carefully and took off with her grav belt.
Slowly, she moved up and into the Gig's airlock.
"This one's in pretty bad shape." she called. "Even with
better attention than we can give I don't think she'd recover
consciousness."
Smith and Jones examined the one Gresha had brought in.
"This one's pretty bad," commented Smith, "We need to get 'im
cleaned off and on intravenous. Radiation, exposure, shock,
second degree burns on the face, we have to get 'im out o' this
suit: it's radioactive."
Jietlshaiepr grabbed a pair of pliers, "First thing's
first." She pushed Jones aside and grabbed the pirates head.
She deftly forced his mouth open against his will and quickly
looked inside. She found what she was looking for quickly and
grabbed with the pliers.
A bloody tooth came out. The pirate screamed and passed
out.
"Wha..." began Jones, then comprehending, "Ahh... Suicide
capsule. Quick thinking."
Jietlshaiepr removed the other prisoner's tooth more gently.
"I think this one's about had it. Radiation, internal injuries,
shock..."
- XXVIII -
The Gig raced back towards the continent.
Corporal Delt the radioed her report, "I got Turner, she's
O.K." pause, "Spacehand Apprentice Coleman is dead: Suit burned
through in re-entry. I'll rendezvous with Lt. Dragoon in
seventeen minutes."
"What's our ETA?" asked Jietlshaiepr.
"Sixteen minutes." read Shtam.
"And the two G-carriers should be right about on top of her
by now." thought Smith.
- XXIX -
Dragoon watched from cover with the guard robot. The two
G-carriers circled around looking at the wilted parachute from
her re-entry kit with their laser turrets spinning around like
great white, one eyed hawks.
One hawk dropped down for a closer look. It hovered a few
seconds a meter above the ground and then set down. Quickly, the
rear hatch opened and the hawk's brood jumped out: a fire team
of four armed with advanced combat rifles.
Dragoon raised her laser rifle to the ready.
The leader started to motion the team to fan out when his
black combat environment suit flared red over the left breast and
burst into flame. He clutched at his chest and went down.
A burst of gauss rifle fire from the guard robot sprayed the
team as it glanced around in confusion. Two more fell with
bloodied suits. The fourth, wounded, still managed to stand and
fire a burst in the air before being cut down by Dragoon's laser.
Dragoon burst from cover and ran for the hatch screaming.
The robot flew directly for the second G-carrier and grabbed
its under carriage.
Bursts of rifle fire rang from inside the first G-carrier
followed by the sizzle of a laser.
The guard robot began ripping away the hull of the G-carrier.
The metal bent easily under its huge strength. A moment later it
exposed a grav module and sent a burst of gauss rifle fire into the
works. It sputtered and shorted briefly. The G-carrier took on a
list.
A sizzle sounded inside the landed G-carrier.
More metal tore away from the G-carrier a second grav module
hove into view. The robot fired into the second module when
Dragoon sounded on its radio. "Robot, get off that thing!" It
dropped away from the listing G-carrier when the first G-carrier
opened fire.
The laser lanced into the sky missing by five meters. The
second beamed by missing by two meters. Then, the underside of
the G-carrier exploded. Tiny bits of fusion plant flew out from
the shattered hull.
Without power, the G-carrier fell like a stone. It dropped
twenty meters and smashed itself into the ground. The fuel tanks
ruptured and hydrogen flared into the sky. The armor caught fire
and the ship blazed like a furnace.
A moment later, in the Gig they heard Dragoon screaming
wildly over the radio.
- XXX -
They found her lounging on the rear hatch of the G-carrier
with a grin on her face, laser rifle on her shoulder, smoking a
cigarette while blood streamed down her arm from a hole in her
combat armor.
In the back ground a radio sounded, "come in... G-carrier
one come in... Report..."
Jones looked over the wound while Smith and Jietlshaiepr
climbed inside the G-carrier.
"It's a standard Tarsan class G-carrier: tech level ten,
Imperial design." commented Smith as she made her way forward.
"No identifying marks on it... can't tell where it was
built." thought Jietlshaiepr aloud.
"I wouldn'a expect there te be any." answered Smith, "Bu'
with the radio open we can send a distress call..."
- XXXI -
The ambush was quickly laid out. Kfoks began digging out
fox holes with the tilly. Trees were broken up to provide cover
with small fires for fake infrared traces to confuse detectors.
Shtam rigged the fusion plant of the G-carrier to detonate while
Turner set up a proximity fuse coupled with a timer. Turner,
Dragoon and Smith hid inside to man the guns and use its radio to
jam communications.
Shtam would be set off in the Gig a kilometer and a half
away for emergencies.
Twenty minutes after the auto distress beacon was activated,
Jones' recon robot picked up a launch headed out from the
mercenaries island to the battle field.
- XXXII -
The launch came in low over the field. A cautious vulture
with its single eye of a missile turret scanning the ground as it
circled over the bodies of the two fallen hawks. Infrared
signals registered like a platoon down on the surface. The
vulture hesitated at putting its tail feathers into such a nest.
The radio sounded. "This is launch number two, we've got a
battle field here... No visible survivors... Looks like enemy
forces, SDB five stand by to give us a laser barrage..."
Smith cut in the G-carrier's jammer.
A few moments later the launch opened fire on the largest
fake emplacement.
Dirt and rocks leaped skyward and rained down on the
concealed ambushers.
Turner cut loose a blast of laser fire from the G-carriers
turret. Three fusion guns and one plasma gun blasted away at the
launch as it nearly hovered over the scene.
The missile turret began to swing round to bear on the
captured G-carrier. A second pulse of the heavy laser found the
launch.
The launch was enshrouded in flame as liquid hydrogen spewed
from a rupture in the fuel tank.
It swerved a moment to port and brought the missile tube to
bear on the G-carrier.
Ens. Smith appeared on the Gig in underclothes. "Get moving!
We're in trouble!"
Shtam glanced sidelong at Smith. "Not only a teleport, but
a blasted cute one too..." The Gig leapt under expert control.
"Concentrate fire on the turret!" shouted Jietlshaiepr over
the sear of plasma bolts.
The missile tube was suddenly enshrouded in fire as the guns
were brought to bear.
"We can't touch it!" howled Gresha.
Suddenly, the missile tube fired. The nose of the warhead
came clear of the tube and jammed solid.
The turret exploded, throwing shrapnel and flame. The
launch canted off to port and swung away wobbling. The Gig
blasted over the horizon blazing laser fire.
The launch was caught in a hell of X-rays. The drives
exploded and cut out. It screamed into the ground and rolled
like a tin can. It finally ground to a halt and lay on its back
in a burning mass of twisted wreckage.
"Shtam, bring it on down!" shouted Jietlshaiepr, "TEAM! We
are leaving!"
- XXXIII -
The Gig lunged toward the coast throttled back. At
transonic speeds Shtam flew it over the trees at three hundred
meters. Going supersonic would attract too much attention: too
much heat, too much atmospheric disturbance.
"If the SDBs are awake they'll spot us very soon." growled
Kfoks. "The explosions back there must have howled to the whole
planet."
"This one is dead." announced Vole. He dragged the body of
the pirate that Jietlshaiepr rescued to the air lock. Quickly,
the lock was stuffed, closed and made ready to drop the body.
"Let's get the other strapped into one o` the low berths."
suggested Jones. "We'll get 'im set up for interog..."
A dull thud resounded through the hull as one point five
gigawatts of photon energy struck the ground five hundred meters
aft of the fleeing Gig.
"They found us!" snapped Shtam.
He sent the Gig into a flurry of twisting corkscrews.
Cushioned by the inertial compensators, everyone but Shtam got a
smooth ride. But it's easier to maneuver when you can feel
something of what you're doing. Shtam, however, only felt one
tenth of one G where he should have been crushed by the force of
six.
Another thud managed to be heard through the sound proofing
of the Gig's hull and above the howl of mach point nine six.
"They're getting too close! How far to the ocean?"
"Five kilometers." Shtam replied mechanically, deep in
concentration as the Gig responded like a thing alive under his
fingers. "I would advise you all... to... strap in... because we
are going to dump... HARD..."
The passengers checked their belts. Impact too fast and no
inertial comps in the universe would save them.
"Ten seconds..." a third thud resounded through the hull:
nearer this time.
Shtam whipped the Gig around and slammed the engines on full
throttle. The Gig slowed as it fell toward the water. In three
seconds the ship slowed from transonic speed and slammed into the
water at twenty kilometers an hour. The hull rang with the jolt
of the sudden stop as the strain pulled on the inertial comps.
"Dive!" shouted Jietlshaiepr.
Shtam dove. Their tracking systems would figure out what
had happened in a few se...
Something let out an eerie high pitched scream. The hull
sounded like a kettle drum for a moment as the ocean was brought
to a small boil around it.
"Damage?" called Jietlshaiepr.
Shtam hesitated, "Nothing I can see... Systems check... all
green."
"Their lasers can't get through water." explained Kfoks.
"Yeah, we're safe, but we're stuck in the briar patch, Brer
Kfoks." sighed Jones.
- XXXIV -
The Gig cruised at thirty kilometers an hour along the ocean
bottom, making its way along the submarine canyons back to the
trench that hid the Flamboyant.
"All right, everyone," sighed Jietlshaiepr, "Seeing as we
have little alternative but taking you to the Flamboyant. I must
ask you to surrender your weapons, and the helmets to your
armor." Carefully she examined the faces of the League of Suns
crew. Various states of distrust on unfamiliar visages.
"Very well," announced Jones. He unbuckled his laser rifle
and handed it to her. He seemed slightly startled when she held
out a hand for his folding machine gun, but he handed it over as
well.
Slowly, the weapons were collected. Smith handed over her
laser rifle and folding machine gun. Delt gave up her gauss
rifle. Walker hesitated markedly, but gave up the PGMP-12.
Dragoon came last. She ignored the collection until it came
to her and then her sole response was to grip the laser rifle
more tightly.
Jietlshaiepr looked her over frostily, "Lt. Dragoon, please
surrender your rifle."
"No."
"I will not allow you to come within a hundred kilometers of
the ship carrying that. You can forget commandeering our ship.
Try it and you won't get three paces."
"Dragoon!" growled Jones. "Hand it over."
"Is that an order?"
"Do I have to make it one?"
Dragoon thought it over, angrily staring at Jones. "Right."
she breathed, "Here."
The rifle was half passed, half thrown.
Jietlshaiepr caught it quickly and the two froze, staring at
each other.
"Our soldiers do not trust each other." sighed Jones, "I would
not have it any other way."
Jietlshaiepr stared at Dragoon, "Indeed, such things are
true of both sides."
- XXXV -
Once docked with the Flamboyant, sickbay was evacuated and
sealed while Jietlshaiepr teleported inside to evaluate the
vaccine.
Jones and Smith blindfolded the prisoner and strapped him in
a low berth. Normally used for cryogenic suspension in an
emergency, they also made good sensory deprivation chambers.
Slowly, they let him return to consciousness.
Jones knelt next to the berth concentrating oddly on the
instrument read out.
"This human has to be a telepath..." breathed Kfoks.
- XXXVI -
"What?... Where am I? I was on the bridge... We
crashed... I've bailed out!...
Ok... I was in the raft when somebody picked me up... They
took my tooth... I've been captured...
Thank god for training camp... It took 'em three weeks to
break me there..."
The prisoner's consciousness began to drop as he went
carefully and deliberately to sleep.
- XXXVII -
Tuerz climbed down from the airlock wearing his female costume
with his fur dyed red white and black. He carried a black leather
case while his jeweled laser pistol hung from its holster.
He looked at the prisoner in the low berth, "Taek!" he
grinned at Kfoks, "You've brought me a present!"
Tuerz opened the black case to reveal a collection of
knives, brass knuckles, whips, blackjacks, and scalpels. Antique
thumbscrews, hand cuffs, electrodes all set carefully into the
red velvet of the case.
Lt. Jones peered into the case. There were several wigs in
the bottom of the case. Odd wigs... They had skin attached...
Jones stared at the scalps. Beautifully carved, obviously the
taker had been very, very talented and very, very patient.
Briefly he used his psionics to examine the instruments psychic
auras. But, against the background of the scalps, the box exuded
nothing but white hot searing pain.
- XXXVIII -
Jietlshaiepr climbed down the hatch an hour later, hypo in
hand. Quickly, she raised the armored flap on Shtam's battle
dress and sent the hypo home. "It appears your vaccine works
without affecting traits that are not lethal." she commented.
"Immunization should be complete within an hour."
"Glad to hear ya confirm it." nodded Jones.
"How is it going with the prisoner?"
"e's been conditioned against interrogation. We're setting
up a few surprises fer 'im. A combination o' sensory deprivation
an' water torture: we'll 'ave him dosed wi' local anesthetic
'cept for certain parts of the body: the top o' the foot, the
side o' the abdomen, the scalp, the back o' the knee...
"We'll irritate these areas intermittently, every few
minutes while we keep 'im conscious with stimulants. 'e won't be
able te sleep. I only 'ope 'e doesn't hove the plague, if he
does, we've got two days."
- XXXIX -
"...This is the house that Jack built... This is the rat
that lived in the house that Jack built... This is the cat that
killed the rat that lived in the house that Jack built... This
is the dog that chased the cat that killed the rat that lived in
the house that Jack built... This is the horse that chased the
dog that chased the cat that killed the rat that lived in the
house that Jack built....
This is the cow that chased the horse that ate the cheese
that chased the cat that killed the dog that lived in the house
that Jack built...."
- XL -
"'e's been thinking 'at fer hours." yawned Smith. The
telepathic trio of Smith, Jones and Jietlshaiepr lounged around
the berth containing their prisoner.
"Well, let's try 'im on a different tack." sighed Jones.
Jones stood, stretched himself and took a deep breath. "I'm
gonna try something."
He knelt by the head of the berth and opened the pirate's
mind. "This is the dog that chased the cat that killed the rat
that lived on the ship that Jack built."
The pirate considered the interjected thought for a moment.
"Ship... Ship dip... Ship fall down, go boom!..."
Jones jaw dropped incredulously.
"Ship fall down, go boom!?"
A flash went off in the pirate's mind. He struggled against
a tumbling ship to keep it aloft. A spinning world flashed by as
the SDB hit the water. Panic... explosive bolts... the dead
bridge crew... the raft... water....
- XLI -
"...Hello, Hello? Is there anybody out there...?"
The answer came back and buried itself in the prisoner's
thoughts "Commander."
A vision wrenched itself into his mind. The dead captain of
the SDB, lying on the broken bridge. "Murdoc..." floated around
his head like a child's balloon.
Another picture floated in: a grey haired man in a
captain's uniform, he was standing in a briefing room with a
crowd of SDB pilots and captains. The map on the holotank was
Welles. The Star Rider's captain was just pointing out the
emergency rendezvous point at the L5 Lagrange point.
A third picture came in, a fat balding man in a colonel's
uniform. "McNamara..." imposed itself indignantly in the
pirate's mind, with a hint of sarcasm and scorn.
"Ollie Sutherland..." came abruptly in. The tone was one of
frank admiration. He appeared in a major's uniform standing on
the top of a grav tank with a command pennant. Male caucasian,
one point eight meters tall, blonde hair closely cropped, blue
eyes with a commanding presence that filled the memory of the
prisoner.
- XLII -
"I'm going to try something..." muttered Jietlshaiepr, and
she knelt close to the berth.
Slowly, she called up an image in the prisoner's mind. A
man with whitish blonde hair. He had whitened scars on his face
and a large one encircling his neck. He wore an old battle
jacket with patches ripped from past enemies corpses, and carried
an ancient sub machine gun.
The pirate was confused at first, then an image came up.
The man stood on the hanger deck of the Star Rider, a Kinunir
class battle cruiser was suspended from the locks. The name
"Roland" rolled about in the prisoner's consciousness like a ball
bearing in a funnel until it hit the spout. "Roland...
Roland... Roland... T... Gunner... Roland T. Gunner..."