To Well And Back (The Deep Dark Well) Read Free Page A

for some time.  The super sharp sword
went through it like it had rotted to the point of collapse.  She pushed down
and felt a bit more resistance as the sword sliced through the iron bolt.  A
swift kick flung the door open, to reveal the trembling King standing in the
center of the room, a long sword in his shaking hand.
    “Who are you?” yelled
the King in a tremulous voice.  “From what realm of Hell do you come?”
    “Not Hell,” said Pandi,
stalking forward.  “Heaven.  I am the Angel the just God, come to make you pay
for your crimes.”
    “That is not true,”
said the other man in the room, wearing the ornate robes of a higher clergy
member.  “You are not from God.  The King was ordained by God, and does his
will.”
    Pandi played the
stunner over the man, making sure she did not touch his head with any part of
the beam.  She wanted him awake.
    “And now you pay,” she
said to the King, bringing her blade back in a blur.  “And may your soul burn
in Hell for eternity.”
    At that last she swung
forward.  The King may have been a formidable warrior in his younger days.  He
was not such now.  And his life was taken swiftly by the blade of the demon
woman.
    Pandora Latham walked
over to the Priest and stood above him.  “I am the Angel of the vengeful God. 
A God who cries over the trials of his people.  Make sure that the next to
ascend the throne knows that God is not happy with the way the nobility treats
the people.  Let him know that the vengeful Angel will be back, should they
decide to continue the policies of the dead King.”
    With that she turned
away, contacting her robots through the link and planning their egress from the
castle.
    [That was evil, Pandora
Latham,] said the voice of Watcher in her mind over the circuit.  [We need to
talk, you and I.]
    “And if I don’t want to
talk?” she said aloud.
    The blade in her hand
shimmered for a moment, then fell into dust at her feet.  She stared at the
remains of the blade for a moment, and realized that he still controlled the
technology that she was using.  “Ok, lover,” she said in a resigned tone,
knowing that he had made his point.  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Chapter Two
     
     
    Racism, xenophobia and unfair discrimination
have spawned slavery, when human beings have bought and sold and owned and
branded fellow human beings as if they were so many beasts of burden.   Desmond
Tutu
     
     
    “Admiral on the bridge,”
called out the voice of the first officer to spot the personage of the fleet
commander.
    “At ease,” called out
Admiral Miklas Gerasi, striding toward his chair that overlooked the organized
chaos that was the bridge of the battleship Orca .  He stared at the holo
tank, and the system of eight stars displayed thereon.  I didn’t think I
would be back here so soon , he thought, his mind going back to his mission
two years past.  And if I never came back it still would have been too soon .
    But they had needed
someone who knew the system, and Gerasi was the most knowledgeable flag officer
in the fleet as far as the Supersystem was concerned.  And I don’t even have
Midas to lean on .  Valaris Midas had been promoted to Commodore, and was
leading a division within the other task force, the one on the way here. 
Gerasi looked with ill-concealed contempt at the Flag Captain they had saddled
him with.
    “Captain  Lashan,”
growled the Admiral, plopping down in his chair.  “How long till orbital
insertion?”
    The Captain looked down
his long patrician nose at his military superior and social superior.  He
started to say something, seemed to think better of it, then thought for a
moment.  As a nephew of the Patriarch of the Nation of Humanity, the man had
little to fear of any superior.  A superior officer who punished him in any
manner better have a perfect case, if he wanted to survive the Inquisition that
would be called to review the incident.  But Gerasi had already raked