“The Water and Sanitation Department,” Jin corrected her.
“Water and sanitation?”
“Yes, your eminence. There are two levels of tunnels beneath the road access corridors. The top tunnel has eight 1.22-meter pipes. Each pair of pipes carries water for roughly a quarter of Sunset City. As it stands now, all those pipes have been breached and all have been cut off at the plants. To be precise, in my words, half of Sunset City cannot fill a glass of drinking water.”
Megan thought of several nasty words but said none.
“Below those pipes are a second set of tunnels. Much larger. In the middle set are eight 1.88-meter pipes that carry what we in the trade call brown water. You might call it shit.”
“I got it the first time,” Megan said.
“On either side of that tunnel are two equally large viaducts that carry rain water out of the city. If matters are bad enough, we can flood the middle one, and pray the brown pips are not broached. Only once in the last thousand years have we had to flood the upper tunnel as well. There is nothing in our recorded history of the transportation access corridor being flooded. Do you understand me?”
“So, you have no good idea about how we dewater the transportation access corridor,” Megan said.
“Yes,” said Sak, Kun and Jin together.
Shit, was not said by Megan.
“So, if we can open drains from the corridor and the top water tunnel into the storm drain system, we could empty this mess.”
“Yes, we could, but the mouse is more likely to bell the cat.”
LILY?
SORRY, MEGAN, BUT THEIR IDIOM WAS JUST SO PERFECTLY A MATCH FOR BELLING THE CAT.
OKAY, I JUST WANTED TO MAKE SURE I HAD IT RIGHT.
“Longknife 2 to Longknife 1. I’m going to need all the engineering support that you can send my way.”
“Longknife 1, it’s already dropping. Some is at the space port waiting for your call.”
“Thanks. We’ve got to drain this tunnel and do it fast.” Megan filled Kris in on what she’d found out.
“So, they not only have sabotaged the roads, but the water, sanitation, and communication systems as well.”
“Which explains why I have yet to see any police, and the only people I have here are those that you demanded be sent here.”
“Yes, having a command radio net can come in handy sometimes,” Kris said drolly.
More vehicles began to roll up to her location. They were well-spaced apart, and all showed sixteen or even twenty-four wheels. Megan soon found herself in a multi-way conversation with the Iteeche civil service and her combat engineers who were only too delighted to swap out for the day to be real, honest-to-God, civil engineers.
Of course, since this job might involve blowing shit up, they were about as happy as a Marine engineer could be.
“Please. Please,” Jin and Kun begged. “Do not blow up our tunnels. It will take us forever to set things right.”
“It won’t do my roads no good either,” Sak added.
“I assure you,” the brigadier of all of Kris’s combat engineers told them, “when we are done, we’ll give you back your facilities not only not broken, but back in working order.”
“But it will take us a year to straighten up this mess,” said Jin of Water and Sewer.
“More for me,” added Kun of Info Transfer.
“I assure you, by sunset tonight. Well, maybe midnight at the latest, we’ll have this all shipshape and Bristol fashion.”
The Iteeche eyed the brigadier leaving Megan to wonder how that idiom translated.
The commanding engineer, however, took the time to keep his Iteeche clients well-informed. That left the Iteeche with their beaks hanging open a lot of the time.
The fish scouts continued to map the three levels of tunnels beneath their feet. As it turned out, the Iteeche did have bulkheads in both the water and sewage tunnels. Only a few kilometers of either had been flooded, and some of the upper tunnel was already slowly draining down into the lower.
The fish scouts, being Smart MetalTM were able to switch back to airborne form so they could scout the unflooded spaces. The fish had to switch to nano size to survive the ride next door to the storm drain. They were closed off by thick doors, but there wasn’t a door the Iteeche had invented yet that could keep out a human nano.
In an hour, the entire stretch of pipes, lines, tunnels and mess were mapped, and the engineers were looking for ways to drain both the road work spaces and the lower water and data tunnel.
“The access from the upper tunnel let the lower tunnel flood, but they aren’t enough to quickly empty the top one. We need to establish some drains down from the roads and data/water tunnels to the bottom, right, and left tunnels.”
“There aren’t any.” Jin said. “Maybe if you could open the doors from the sewage tunnel to the drain tunnels . . .”
“Too slow. We’d still be waiting for it to drain next week. Nope, we want it gone now. Okay, I’m going to send engineers down to punch holes through the tunnel walls every ten meters along both sides of the top tunnel.”
“How do you intend to punch all those holes?” Megan asked.
“Just a wee bit of plastic explosives will do the trick.”
“Explosives!” came from three Iteeche.
“Wee explosives. Nothing big. Just enough to punch the hole and singe the dirt between the two tunnels. We don’t want the water tearing out the ground beneath our feet, now do we?”
“How about we have some Smart Metal standing by to reinforce those wee holes your wee explosives will put in the tunnels?” Megan suggested.
“Oh. Yep. We can do that, too.”
The three Iteeche turned to Megan. “You said that you would have everything working again by sunset,” Sak said. “Midnight at the latest.”
“Yes, I did.”
“But now this warrior is speaking of blowing up our tunnels.”
“Yes, he is.”
“We will never get our systems fixed if you go blowing them up.”
“You may be surprised how careful Marine combat engineers can be when they blow stuff up.”
“May the wide blue sky protect us from your chaos,” Sak muttered, and the three of them turned away.
As they’d talked, combat engineers in full battle armor had been making their way down the access staircase into the dark waters.
Megan called her doubting Iteeche managers back to watch her holograph as tiny Marines half-walked, half-swam along the walls of the top access tunnel with its eight huge water pipes and squared-off cable runs stacked one on top of the other going down the middle. There was just enough space for an Iteeche to crawl though.
Each engineer would stick a few soft pellets of explosives into the corner of the tunnel floor. Then, he or she would place a bit of Smart MetalTM cloth over it, and run their hand along the edges, sealing it to the wall as well.
“That is how they are going to blow holes in the wall?” Jin said. “Something that small won’t even scratch the paint.”
“We shall see,” Megan said.
About that time, a large sonic boom shook the rigs, and likely the buildings alongside the road.
“I think our ten thousand tons of Smart Metal just arrived,” the brigadier told Megan.
“Good. Will it be used to reinforce the water pipes and data conduits?”
“That, Commander, will be the first use we put it to,” was a polite way of telling a Longknife to get her nose out of his business.
Megan took two steps back, but kept watching.
In the murky waters, Marines kept laying down four long daisy chains, one on each side, one from each direction. Megan wondered if the four daisy chains would be broken up into several more, but she swallowed the question.
She didn’t need to be put in her place another time.
They were still working below when a convoy of large-wheeled, crew-less rigs rolled up under the escort of a dozen more armed Marine infan
try fighting vehicles. They’d come directly from the airport, driving the immobile rolling road the entire way.
An engineer and a programmer worked with the lead rig for a few minutes, then a long line of Smart MetalTM began to snake its way down the access stairwell. A pair of Marines in battle rattle moved below working alongside the snake.
More metal flowed below, and more Marines went with it. One after another, the fifty big rigs would move forward, toss a line to the big-wheeled metal transport ahead of it, and begin feeding metal down even before the first one finished emptying itself out. It was amazing to watch.
“What are you doing?” Kun asked.
“As much as we are doing our best to keep the explosions as small as possible, and direct the force of the explosion down, and away from the water in the tunnel, we know there will be blowback. This magic metal is to reinforce your conduits. We’ve checked, and there’s water in your conduits. We don’t want any pressure transferred onto them. The same with the water pipes. Especially the water pumps. We don’t want to damage them.”
Megan was happy to see that the Iteeche were happy learning that the humans weren’t totally set on leaving their city unlivable.
“We’re putting armor around everything we think might be damaged. Oh, and we’re also plugging the holes in the pipes. As soon as you make sure the water is ready to flow, you can turn it back on.”
“Why did you humans not annihilate us during the war?” Sak asked, his lower beak hanging slack.
“My great-great-grandfather Raymond Longknife didn’t want anyone annihilated,” Megan said. “You were very good fighters. He knew if we kept that war going, the bloody wreckage when it was done would leave no one the victor.”
The three Iteeche looked at Megan.
“You are one of those Longknifes?” Jin asked.
“That is both my honor and my curse.”
The three of them did that chuckle that Iteeche do deep in their throats.
39
“We’ve got all our explosives in place,” came over the net.
“Clear the tunnel,” the engineering brigadier at Megan’s elbow ordered.
Marines in armored space suits began to climb up the stairwell from the flooded spaces below. They quickly moved to form loose ranks. They raised their helmet face plates and stood around joking. Marines and Iteeche got food and warm drinks from the cook wagon, and spirits rose.
A captain was last up the stairs. He eyed the troops in three formations and ordered. “I want a full count from each platoon.”
A moment later, a Gunny had each of the groups counting off. With the final number, the Gunny and his LT put their heads together, then the young LTs took the total to the captain. Only when it was clear that all were present or accounted for did the captain trot over to report to the brigadier.
“You may blow your daisy chains when ready,” the brigadier said.
“Gunny,” the captain called. “Blow this place.”
“Fire in the hole,” boomed in a voice it took years to acquire, and all around Megan, people looked ready to run. Especially Iteeche.
What followed was disappointing.
The original explosions that had started the mess came with a roar and shook the ground. These explosions were muffled and could hardly be felt. However, every five or ten seconds, there was another one, then another one.
“What’s happening?” Megan asked the brigadier.
“We’ve got four daisy chains. Call them A and B on one side, right and left, and C and D on the other side, right and left of the exit we’ve been using. We’re starting at the far end of each chain. A goes first, then D, then C, and finally B. Then we repeat, walking the explosives up closer to the stairwell. If things go as we planned, by the third or fourth number in each chain, water will be emptying down into the storm drains. There won’t be much water pressure on the last couple of charges close to the stairs.”
Megan nodded. She’d known the engineers knew this place did not need to look like a war zone when they finished. Sure enough, it wouldn’t.
In between the soft explosions, the roar of water could now be heard coming from the stairwell. Megan turned to the three Iteeche bosses she trusted. “Did you get all that?”
They nodded.
“I’ll have nanos down there as soon as the last explosion goes off. We still need to clear the explosives we spotted.”
Over the next two hours, work moved at lightning speed. The engineers set up blowers to force air into the maintenance corridors to drive the remaining water down into the storm drains as well as empty the middle brown water tunnel.
As soon as it was safe, Marine engineers and demolition teams went below and used nanos to probe each of the threatening charges. It was quickly apparent that all had come from the same bomb maker and were to a common design. Once that was figured out, a weakness in the design was identified and the nanos began turning the bombs into inconveniences for the demolition teams to carefully remove.
Only then were the Iteeche craftsmen and technicians allowed below to do their own survey of the damage.
Thanks to the borrowed Smart MetalTM, the potable water lines came up first. They were followed quickly by the brown water lines. Now Iteeche could get a drink of water and flush their toilets.
Draining the communication conduits was a bit slower, and water had damaged some delicate equipment. Again, however, with Lily, Megan, and Smart MetalTM handy, replacements were quickly installed and more and more of the communications net came back on line.
That left Megan walking over with Sak to look at the circuit board they’d come here to scavenge in the first place.
“I think the situation has changed,” Megan told the Iteeche.
“How so?”
“We now have Smart Metal that we can use for the replacement boards you need down the road.”
“We don’t need to pull these boards?”
“Maybe one so that Lily and I can study it. Can you have your people look at the boards here and see which one might be the easiest and safest to take out?”
“Yes. Of course.”
A number of craftsmen went down the line of boards and studied them all. Finally, they agreed on the best one to extract. They grounded themselves with care, then with equal care, removed the board and immediately set it to rest in one of the metal cases they had brought. There, it rested in a bed of foam, as precious as any human baby.
“Now, Lily and I need to have a look at that thing,” Megan said.
There was now a lot of unneeded Smart MetalTM lines, cables, and coverings laying around. No doubt, in time, it would all be collected, but that time was still in the future. As the Iteeche watched with amazed eyes, several fine filaments of what they insisted on calling ‘magic metal’ proved to them again that there was magic here. They wove their way from where they were over to the circuit board. Other ends wrapped themselves around the torque at Megan’s neck, connecting Lily to the board.
For several long minutes, Megan stood there as her mind infiltrated the board, accompanied by Lily, and to a lesser extent, Nelly and Sal, Kris and Jack’s computers. Together, they assessed the working of the board, what it did, and, inevitably, because they associated with humans, how to make it better.
Finally, Megan nodded. “I think we have your design down. Now, do you have any testing equipment?”
Sak barked an order and three of the craftsmen had their helpers bring their tool boxes. They pulled various parts and assemblies from the three boxes and put together a large, rather clunky-looking test bed.
“Please test the original.”
They did, and found it in working condition.
“Now test that one,” Megan said, pointing to a new board that was extruding itself from a sheet of Smart MetalTM that had been used as armor to protect part of the road from the pressure of explosions.
The Iteeche had been startled by the humans far too much today to show any surprise at finding an apparen
t copy of their circuit board dangling from part of the road. They collected it, studied it for visual imperfections, then plugged it into their test rig.
The rig hummed and the needles on a number of meters rose until they hung right on the dot of the recommended results. Their own board had showed deviations, but all within acceptable parameters.
This board was right in the middle of each meter.
A lot of beaks ended up on the floor. Still, the senior craftsman took the new board and carefully laid it in the cushioned bed of a second box.
“You can reinstall the sample,” Megan ordered. “We can make the twenty-five you need.”
“Why did you not do this when we first found this problem?” Sak asked, his four eyes wide.
“We had no sample like this working model we just examined,” Megan said. “Also, this is Smart Metal that we’re using here. What you see here was taken from the armor of one of the Iteeche battlecruisers in orbit above your heads. Some Iteeche crew is at greater risk now than they were this morning. Admittedly, the risk is small because we spread it out over a large number of ships. Still, my commanding admiral was reluctant to accept that risk.”
Megan glanced around at the damp walls. “Then this happened. Someone made it a battle of wills to see if the people of Sunset City would go hungry tonight.”
Megan grinned. “Never enter into a battle of wills with Longknifes. You will lose every time.”
“That is the sky’s honest truth,” Sak said.
“Now, good friend, is this section of the road ready to roll?”
“It will be by the time we have the other section up.”
And the Iteeche spoke the truth.
By sunset over Sunset City that night, all the roads were rolling.
40
Grand Admiral Kris Longknife let Megan stay below for the night. It seemed she had promised all those who had worked for her a spectacular banquet. Them and their families. It looked like she was making a major draw down on the fleet’s supply of fine Iteeche food, but Kris did not gainsay her lieutenant.
She’d been through a challenging day, and the Iteeche who managed to keep up with her deserved whatever the Navy would grant them.
Kris Longknife Page 20