Castaway Resolution

by Eric Flint

  “All right, both of you. Get that rope on. Just…” Mommy’s voice hesitated, then finished, “…just be careful.”

  Hitomi swallowed, and nodded. “We will, Mommy.”

  Chapter 32

  Sakura sank down onto the amazingly clean, bright white sand of the beach. “I am so tired. Did we really have to go another five kilometers down?”

  “The more I’m looking at the telemetry from the nanos we left behind,” her father said, “the more I have to say ‘yes.’ That wave did massive damage to the entire ecostructure of that end of our continent. Not as much as it would have if it had hit the actual floating landmass, of course—”

  “Then none of us would be here to argue about it,” the sergeant said.

  “Yes, that was certainly fortunate. Though if it had hit farther away, we would have been much more fortunate. In any event, I am now rather pessimistic about the survival of that section of our floating home. If all of us weren’t about at the end of our endurance, I would in fact rather we kept going. If an island-eater or three come calling, I would like to have as many kilometers between me and them as I can get.”

  All of them had seen one of the monstrous creatures in action at least once; Sakura remembered the three titanic curved spines bursting through water and coral-based land like breaching mountains, rising so high that they cast a shadow that blotted out the sun, and she shivered. “How far away should we go? Maybe we should just camp here for a bit and wait for us to get Emerald Maui back, then we can use it to move?”

  “That suggestion, I think I like it,” Tavana said, sitting next to her and giving her a little one-armed hug.

  “Actually…so do I,” Laura said, with a speculative gaze out towards the ocean. “If the kids can get that piece out of the drive jet today.”

  Sakura nodded. After securing the cable—which had taken them about an hour—Hitomi had been almost completely exhausted, and after checking her vitals and those of Francisco, her mom had decreed that both of them needed to take a day or two to rest before trying any more strenuous work. “Francisco was suffering from mild shock,” she’d heard Mom say to Campbell and Xander. “Emotional stress can do that, and the two of them have been in an emergency situation all along; this attack upset him more than he let on. And Hitomi…she took a lot of strain through her whole body, and she’s so tiny…”

  “You don’t need to justify anything to us,” Sergeant Campbell had said. “They need to rest, they need to rest, that’s all there is to it.”

  But with the improved healing nanos provided and the quick recovery that kids usually had anyway, both Hitomi and Francisco were fully recovered today—and they didn’t want to wait any more. Not that Sakura could blame them; it had to be creepy and lonely, sitting in Emerald Maui, floating along with no one else but the unconscious-and-nearly-dead Whips.

  That thought made Sakura shudder again; she felt Tav’s arm tighten on her. “What is it, Saki?”

  “Just…just thinking about Whips. Time’s going by and…and I just…” she shook her head. “You know, we grew up together. This is the longest I’ve ever been away from him, really.”

  “So, it is like he is your brother.”

  “Yeah, the only brother I had.” She tried to smile. “Though I guess I’ve sort of got some more now.”

  “Well, I am not exactly feeling like your brother, you know.”

  That got her to laugh, a little. “Well, I guess not. But Maddox and Franky, definitely.”

  “Yes, they are like my little brothers too.” Tavana looked out at the ocean. “How far away are they now?”

  “Satellite positioning says they’re about two hundred seventy-five kilometers from our current position, and their drift’s speeding up.”

  “That’s about ten hours or so away if they get the engines running.”

  Sakura tried to ignore the “if” in there.

  “What do you think, Captain?” Sergeant Campbell was addressing Xander Bird, continuing the earlier conversation.

  “We could,” Xander said after a minute. “Satellites don’t show any significant weather for this area over the next few days. We ought to know one way or the other about Emerald Maui by then. If everyone else is on board with this, I say we camp—move inland a hundred meters or so just to stay away from the worst of the beachside predators, go hunting and see if we can get some fresh meat and maybe berries and such.”

  “All in favor?” Laura asked. “Well, it looks like it’s unanimous. Hitomi, Francisco, we’re going to wait for you here. It’s marked now on your maps.”

  “I see it, Mommy! That little bay on the side.”

  “That’s right, honey. How are you two coming along?”

  “Francisco’s tied the prybars so they hang right near the shard, and he’s ready to go. I’ve got the manual controls for the winch.”

  “How will they know when to pry and when to pull?” Laura asked to the group at large.

  “Tav and I linked the right libraries to track the behavior. If they’re lucky, it’ll just pull right out with a straight pull. If not, well, we track the tension on the rope, the outrigger the winch is connected to, and the jet engine. We don’t want to damage anything else while we do this. If it looks like it can’t be just pulled straight out, we should have data from the strain sensors that tells us where it’s hanging up; that’s where Francisco will have to pry. Hopefully that can be done without tension on the cable, but if not, all we can do is advise Franky where the safest place to pry from is.”

  Sakura bit her lip. Francisco was going to be in the most dangerous position if that happened; with tension on the cable while prying, the massive shard could suddenly pop loose, and if he was in the wrong position when that happened…

  “We have to do this,” Francisco said, and she could tell he was trying to sound like the sergeant, or maybe Xander. “So how dangerous it is doesn’t matter. If we do not get Emerald Maui running, Whips will die. Maybe we won’t—there is a lot of food and water here, and before that runs out maybe you could make a boat to get us back—but Whips won’t live that long. So we have to do this.”

  “Right,” said Hitomi. “And we’re ready.”

  “We may not even need to camp,” observed Maddox. “If this works…we can get them home soon, I think.”

  “Even best-case, we’ll be camping,” the sergeant said. “But maybe only one day. Let’s see how the kids do.” He raised his voice. “Okay, Francisco, Hitomi—go to it, and good luck!”

  Chapter 33

  “Thank you, Sergeant!” Hitomi said. She looked across the water to Francisco, who was sitting on the tail above the jet. “Cross your fingers, like my dad says.”

  She saw Francisco hold up his hands; he’d crossed all four fingers of each hand and hooked the thumbs together so they were crossed, too. “Let’s go!”

  Hitomi activated the winch. “Taking up the slack…getting tighter…”

  The cable, which had been somewhat loosely wavering below, became straighter and straighter. Now it was tense, going in a ruler-straight line from the front of the winch into the water at a shallow angle, up from the floatcoral fragment embedded in the engine. “Tension rising. You see this, Tavana, Xander?”

  “We see it. All looking good so far. Keep going, Hitomi.”

  She slid the control up slowly. A faint hum transmitted itself through the outrigger to her boots as the winch’s motor applied more and more force to the line. “Could this break the cable?”

  Tavana chuckled. “No, Hitomi. The cable, it could hold up all of Emerald Maui without any problem. The winch’s anchor might pull loose, but the cable, it will be fine.”

  The winch hummed louder, the cable thrummed from the vibration; little ripples emanated from the cable where it entered the water.

  “All right, that’s enough, it’s not coming out with a simple pull,” Xander said finally.

  Hitomi hit the cutoff as soon as she heard “that’s enough.” The hum faded away and
the cable relaxed a few centimeters.

  “Hmm. Analysis coming…Okay, Francisco, we’re highlighting two points in your omni. Try prying at those a few times, then come up and we’ll try again.”

  Francisco nodded. First he stood up and looked around the water carefully. Hitomi went onto the top of Emerald Maui and also made sure there were no suspicious shadows in the water nearby. “Clear!” she shouted down.

  “Okay! I am going down!”

  She saw Francisco’s thin form dive into the clear water of Lincoln’s ocean. Distorted by ripples, she could still see him grab one of the dangling prybars and insert it somewhere at the base of the shard.

  It took about ten minutes of Francisco prying, coming to the surface to rest, then diving back down to try levering against the shard from a different direction. Finally the boy pulled himself out of the water. “Did a lot of prying on both points,” he said, his voice somewhat breathless. “Try again?”

  “Okay. Are you clear, Francisco?”

  “All the way out of the water and out of the way, yes, Tav.”

  “Okay, Hitomi, try it again.”

  Once more the winch returned to its humming and the cable stretched out, straight as a steel bar. Hitomi carefully increased the power, a little bit at a time.

  “Keep going…keep going…I’m seeing a little variation in strain, maybe it’s going to—”

  Without warning, the cable sprang back with a deep thung! that made Hitomi jump. She hit the emergency stop control; the cable sank from nearly horizontal to vertical, bouncing slightly from the weight of something on the other end.

  “Did it work? Is it out?” she asked, feeling excitement and hope bubbling up through her. “Something’s still on the cable, is it out?”

  “Checking the cable…there’s definitely something heavy tied to it! Francisco, what do you see?”

  “The shard, it is gone! I don’t see anything sticking out of the engine now!”

  “Excellent!” Sergeant Campbell said. “Now, you’ve got to reel in that piece and then get it loose, so you can put the winch away and we can test the engine.”

  “Maybe not,” Xander said; Hitomi tensed at the tone of his voice. “Well, yes, get that piece off the winch, but I don’t think we’re ready to test the engine.”

  “What? Why?” demanded Francisco. “The piece is out, isn’t it?”

  “That’s what I don’t know. Oh, I’m sure you’ve got most of it, but I didn’t see the shifts in strains that I expected in the engine.”

  Francisco said something in Spanish that Hitomi was sure was a bad thing to say, especially since her new omni’s auto-translator blocked it out. Since it was one of the cheap omnis they’d found a small case of, it didn’t have any of the custom apps in it, but she was pretty sure even her old one wouldn’t have translated that. “You mean it broke off.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.” Xander’s voice sounded both unhappy and apologetic, as though the bad news was somehow his fault.

  “Well, I will just go down and look.” Francisco jumped off and swam to the engine intake.

  He was back up in a minute. “You are right. There is a little piece of it stuck in; it looks like it broke off near one of the pry points.”

  “No way to tie onto it again?”

  “No. Here, I took a picture.”

  Hitomi saw the image pop up in her omni; the piece of floatcoral didn’t stick out more than about five or ten centimeters, nowhere near enough to tie the cable onto.

  “Damnation.” Sergeant Campbell sighed. “Well, then, no help for it; you’re going to have to start prying and chipping at it somehow to get it out.”

  “Hold on,” came the voice of Pearce Haley. “Sam, do they have any Bond-All on board?”

  “The universal adhesive? I dunno. Hitomi?”

  As the question was asked, she could see a little box, set on the wall halfway back in the cargo hold. “There’s a box with tubes in it marked as Vaneman’s UA #3. I think it’s a kind of glue. Is that close enough?”

  “Universal Adhesive Three? Yeah, that’s Vaneman’s version of Elmin’s Bond-All. What’s the idea, Pearce?”

  “Bond-All works underwater, I know that. If Vaneman’s does the same, they could bond the end of the cable to that piece and pull. If it sets properly it will be about as strong as the cable.”

  “Damn good thinking, Pearce. Francisco, Hitomi, you got that?”

  “Si, Sergeant! We untie the big chunk, then use this Vaneman material on the end of the cable to hook it to the piece that’s stuck in the engine. How do I do it, exactly?”

  “I could do it!” Hitomi pointed out.

  “You are right. How do we do it?”

  “First, check the batteries on the tube—you’ll want to be sure the nanocatalysts are still active.”

  “Be right back!” Hitomi ran across the outrigger and vaulted into Emerald Maui, heading for the back. We are not going to be stopped now!

  The adhesive tubes were a little larger than she remembered; she couldn’t quite close her hand around one. Still, she didn’t know how many they would need, so she detached the whole case and ran back out. “There’s no indicators on the tubes,” she said after a minute, “but I’m getting a green status ping from the carrying case.”

  “Makes sense,” Campbell said. “Okay, me and Pearce have it down.” He sent a little animation. “You slather a bunch of it on the cable end, like you see here. Then you use that box and tell it to activate ‘Bond Phase I’; that’ll make it sticky but keep it from flowing away. Bring it down and stick it on the chunk of floatcoral. This is gonna take two of you, because one of you, probably Francisco, will have to drag the cable and hold it in place, and Hitomi will have to bring the case down with it. The controller’s signal won’t go more than about half a meter or so underwater, so you’ve got to get the box close when you trigger ‘Bond Phase II.’ Takes about ten seconds to set, so make sure you’ve both got the breath it’s gonna take. Right?”

  Hitomi reviewed the images and instructions. It seemed pretty simple even to her, though she knew from their previous underwater work that it might not be easy. She looked at Francisco, who nodded. “Got it, sir.”

  “All right. Get to it, crew.”

  Bringing up and releasing the big chunk of floatcoral took a little bit; it was easy to winch up, but the cable was deeply dug into the material of the coral and the knots were half-sunk beneath the surface. After about five minutes, her mom spoke up. “Just cut it loose, kids. You have lots and lots of cable. No need to wear yourselves out on this. Right, everyone?”

  “Well, I hate losing anything…but yeah, you’re right, Laura. Four, five meters of cable’s no big deal. Use the cutter control on the front of the winch.”

  The floatcoral shard dropped away into the depths, then slowly rose back into sight, drifting gradually farther away. “Okay!”

  “Okay, you’ve got the sergeant and lieutenant’s instructions. You know what to do.”

  “Right.”

  First Hitomi made the winch pay out the right length of cable; Francisco made a test dive to make sure it would reach easily. He came back, had her retract about half a meter of cable, then checked again. “Perfect,” Francisco said.

  “Okay, then we’re going to do it, right?” She reached out and pulled out one of the tubes of adhesive.

  “Guess so.” Francisco held up the slightly splayed end of the cable as she carefully covered it with a heavy layering of the thick but still easily spread, glittering silvery gel. “Triggering Bond Phase I,” she said, and had her omni engage that signal.

  The gel shimmered, the silvery sparkle seeming to form into layered streaks. It also stopped flowing around.

  “Looks like it’s working the way you said, sir,” Francisco said. “So now we go under and stick it on.”

  “Hold on!” Hitomi jumped up and did another survey around the ship. She spotted a raylamp crawling up the other side of the tail, but nothing else; a c
areful approach and quick shot and the creature was gone. “Okay.”

  They made their way over to the tail and stood, hyperventilating until Hitomi felt really lightheaded, then dove into the water.

  As they approached, she could see the fragment—pure, bright white where it had broken off. It was slightly rough, like cement, with some internal structure she didn’t understand. Francisco dragged the cable down and shoved the end against the fragment’s surface. The adhesive belled out and then seemed to tighten, covering the entire area and some small part around the edge.

  That fit the animation. She swam a little closer and held out the box, triggering the second bond phase.

  Francisco held the cable in place with grim determination, his legs hooked over part of the engine support, his hands keeping the cable and fragment pressed together.

  Ten seconds could seem like an eternity underwater, but she kept her eyes shifting between the cable and the timer in her omni display. The silver color began to mist over, the translucency of the gel started to thicken, as the adhesive became more and more a pure white color little different from that of the floatcoral.

  Francisco’s face was darker and jaw clenched, but he did not move until the counter dropped to zero; the two of them leapt for the surface. Francisco gave a huge gasp. “Almost…ran out,” he said after a moment. “But wasn’t…going to stop now.”

  “Is the bond strong now, Lieutenant Haley?”

  “It should be. Nanocatalyzed adhesives work very fast.”

  “We’ll give it a few minutes anyway,” Hitomi said. She didn’t want to take chances. Besides, that would give her a little time to rest and get the remaining adhesive and its box back to their proper places.

  By the time she returned, Francisco was up by the winch. “Want to try it now?”

  “Sure.” She touched the controls.

  The cable drew taut once more, the winch hummed its song of power—and with almost no pause, the cable suddenly sprung back and hung limp again.

  “Oh, no! Did it come off?”