"Jane?"
"Yes Imperious leader?"
"Care to comment about communications?"
"Confirmed."
We waited, but she said nothing more.
"Is that confirmed you will comment, or confirmed was the comment?"
"Confirmed."
Dick couldn’t hold his grin in.
"Speculation?"
"Confirmed."
I sighed.
"So the system is somehow interfering with communications?"
"Confirmed."
"Will you please investigate it, and find a way to cut through it?"
"F.A.B."
I shook my head, and finally sat.
"What does FAB mean?" asked Dick.
"No-one knows," I answered. "The various incarnations of the shows used it, but never explained it. The best guess and most accepted meaning was 'message received and understood', while some maintained it meant literally, 'Full Acknowledgement of Broadcast'. As far as anyone can tell, it's some nonsensical thing by the concept writer to instil something unique in the mission patter."
His eyes glazed over.
Fortunately, people started entering for dinner, so it didn’t go any further.
I carefully kept out of the discussion which raged up and down the table while we were eating, after having my 'proceed with caution' comment go down like a lead balloon. The only decision made was to proceed on immediately, but as they left, there seemed to be a consensus about what to do. I spent some time with Angel and Nut, before heading back to the Bridge again.
The way into the second cavern was enlarged to easily allow the dropship through. But inside the second cavern, the reason for where the shuttle had ended up become apparent.
Amanda started off down the slope, and quickly lost control, sliding and slipping until she fetched up against a boulder. She couldn’t get any traction, so changed back into a combat suit. And promptly slipped over, and landed on her face.
Annabelle told her to stay where she was. There was a hurried discussion, after which Aleesha started digging a road to wind its way down the slope from one side to another, taking the edge off the slope, and removing all the slippery topsoil on the way. BA followed her slow progress, and finally they came to Amanda, and the two of them helped her up. Making a road downwards continued.
"Why do the girls need to go down there?" I asked Jane.
"The shuttle's airlock is well below the surface. Before we can get anyone out, it will have to be dug out."
It was slow going, and I went to bed with the girls still hard at it.
"JON!"
I woke suddenly, and jerked upright.
"What?"
"Grace took the Dropship into the second cavern twenty minutes ago, to be ready for a fast evac when the girls dug out the airlock."
"And?"
"The entire cavern collapsed on them."
Eleven
I sat there for a moment, and then slowly sank back onto my pillow.
"JON!"
"What?"
"GET UP NUMBNUTS!"
"What time is it?"
"Not yet three."
"Get me up at six."
I turned over and prepared to go back to sleep. My nightmares usually never came close together, so this one should be the only one for the night.
Hands dragged me out of bed, threw me into the shower, and suddenly I was soaking wet.
"Jeez Jane! Cant a guy go back to sleep after a nightmare?"
She pulled me out of the shower, and I stood there in dripping wet boxers and t-shirt.
"Get a grip Jon. Your team is under tons of rock and dirt. We have work to do."
"You're serious?" She looked me in the eyes. "Fuck! You are serious. I thought I'd dreamed it." She shook her head.
I shucked my sleepers, threw myself back in the shower, woke up, exited, dried off, added underwear, shifted into 'slinky red', and was back on the Bridge before Angel could Meow a protest. Well, maybe she got a few in, but I wasn’t paying attention.
"Where's George and Melissa?" I demanded as I plumped down into my chair.
"On their way back."
A screen popped up, and the remains of the second cavern appeared. The bird showed us around the whole space. There was no sign of anything metallic. There was also no sign of the road they'd been making. The view turned upward to show another large hole in the ground.
"How far under are they?"
"Far enough that both the twins and BA are pinned in place, and the Dropship is now as badly off as the shuttle is."
"Damnit."
"Yes."
"What happened?"
"Shortly after they converged on the shuttle, there was a nine point five earthquake. The entire plain suffered collapses over an enormous area."
"Murphy's Law."
"Indeed."
"Someone should have shot him the day he uttered that."
"Ha ha."
I sighed. Jokes aside, this was serious.
"Plans?"
"None. It was assumed someone would be able to pull anyone out."
"Bad assumption."
"Confirmed."
I thought for a moment.
"Have George and Melissa dock normally. We won't be using their ships."
"What do you have in mind?"
I told her.
The modifications to Gunbus took a couple of hours, after being shifted to one of the Cargo Bay airlocks. The rest took that long for just the designs, and another four hours to build.
As I waited for the announcement we were good to go, I had breakfast with the few people left on Deck Two. There was nothing Lacey and his pilots could do to help, but I talked them and Dick through what I was planning, in case it didn’t work. If it came to it, they'd have to think of Plan C. Lacey wasn’t at all happy, but there was nothing they could do, and he knew it.
Jane walked in wearing the uniform from the rescue show. She pulsed it to me. George and Melissa changed immediately, and with a shrug, I did the same. We were wished luck as we walked out.
On Gunbus, George took the pilot's seat.
Jane, Melissa, and I took up positions on the Cargo Deck. I gave George the order to launch, and he brought us down over the danger zone.
From a thousand meters up, with the Cargo Bay airlock open, the ground looked like a giant had been digging holes in it. I supposed in a way, one had. As we looked, another hole opened up beneath us.
Gunbus came down nose first, stopping at a hover some fifty meters up from ground level. Ship grav kept us right way up, as Jane and I entered the external hatch of the strange machine we'd had to build from scratch.
The cockpit had two seats, one above and behind the other, in the fashion of two seater fighters. Behind us was a standard Gladiator bedroom space, without anything in it. There was no forward view. Jane brought up the screens we would need, and we were ready to go.
"Mole to Thunderbird Two," I said. "George, drop us gently please."
"F.A.B."
There was a laugh in his voice, and Melissa's giggle came through the coms as well.
We moved. I watched Gunbus vids as we slowly lowered out the Cargo Bay. On the front of what had been a Gladiator shell, we had fitted an enormous drill head. While still in the air, Jane started it slowly spinning. Standing on our rear, which was still a Gladiator engine section, was Melissa. She was holding onto the metal link ladder being used to drop us to the surface.
We touched ground, and the nose began to dig. George halted the lowering process when our drill was far enough in to support the weight of the ship. Melissa released the ladder, and climbed up it a few rungs, before holding on tight.
"Good luck Mole," she said.
"F.A.B." I responded, feeling quite silly.
Jane grinned at me. I could feel it, and turned around to see it.
George was moving away now, towards the middle of the hole over the second cavity, Melissa now climbing the ladder to safety. When he was ou
t of the way, I slowly pushed the speed slider forward. The drill bit into the ground, and down we went.
I'd deliberately not chosen to drop into the middle of the cavern. The idea was to go down through solid earth, and come up underneath our people.
We moved slowly downwards, carving a hole behind us. Once we were completely buried, I pushed the joystick to angle us over, and we began to move towards the cavern. Jane had mapped the whole area, so we knew where the cavern was, and where each of our people, the Dropship, and the Shuttle were. We were navigating by almost antique methods, barely more than dead reckoning.
We passed into the cavern well below its new surface level, digging through solid ground, and continued down until we had enough depth to be able to turn us to come up underneath the nearest combat suit.
"Mole to combat suits, prepare to be pushed up out of the ground."
"That you Jon?"
"No it’s the Easter Bunny. Jane and I are below you and about to push one of you to the surface. Once you can move, George has a ladder waiting for you to climb up. Get out of here immediately, before any more comes down on you."
"But…" It was Amanda of course.
"No buts. It's too dangerous down here. You get out as soon as you can move. Acknowledge."
Three sets of F.A.B. were heard.
"Your suits are going to be a tight fit in Gunbus, so be careful with the paintwork."
As we approached, I had slowed us. With one of the suits supposed to be directly above us now, I eased us forward as slowly as I could. There was a moment's resistance, and we felt a jolt as extra load came on the Mole. Movement continued though, and the screen showing the feed from the bird, showed a bulldozer braking the surface on the top of the drill. I stopped us immediately, waited while Amanda changed back into a combat suit, and rolled onto her feet. When she was far enough away, I reversed us back down the hole we had made coming up.
When we backed into solid ground, I made subtle adjustments to dig upwards towards the next nearest suit. The second time was more or less the same as the first, and as we headed back down again, Aleesha was grabbing hold of the ladder, waiting for Amanda to finish climbing in the top. We repeated the operation for BA.
The dropship was next. It took a short while to reorient to come up under it. Unexpectedly, contact with the underside of the Dropship stopped us dead. I applied more power, and for a moment I thought we weren’t going to be able to do this, when the Dropship moved, and slowly was pushed to the surface.
The bird showed us the extensive damage it had taken. The cockpit was completely smashed open. The ramp was down, and the interior filled with dirt.
Jane looked at me with a totally stricken look on her face.
"No life signs," she said.
Twelve
"NO!" I screamed, and jerked upright so violently I was propelled completely off the bed. I lay there on my left side for a moment, before jumping to my feet. Angel yowled at me, but I ignored her.
"Stop doing this to me!" I yelled at the ceiling, as I started to run.
"Jane!"
"Jon, I was about to wake you…"
"I know. The cavern collapsed on them. By the time I reach the Launch Deck, I need a grav sled attached to the underside of one of the Epees."
"Grav sled? Isn't that…"
"We don’t have the time to make something better."
I'd shifted into 'slinky red' by now, over my sleepers, and dived into the access shaft.
"They have hours of life support."
"No they don’t."
"Why not?"
"The Dropship sustained major damage, and its ramp was down. The cockpit was destroyed. Those in combat suits have five hours air, but only half of them had combat suits. Best guess is we have about two hours if they can share their life support. Worst guess is someone couldn’t join with a combat suit and has little more than twenty minutes left."
I hit the bottom of the shaft running, threw myself onto a trolley, and was taken at break neck speed to the next shaft down.
"Confirmed." It was belated, but Jane had obviously run the numbers thoroughly.
I had no choice. I had to risk using the grav sled to pull the dropship out before someone died. The Epee was the smallest ship we had. Not my first choice, but really the only choice given the task at hand.
"Get teams two and three in a Dropship, and land them in Custer's Cargo Bay. They may need to dig people out. Have all his cargo droids standing by as well. Send George back down again, and have him wait not far away from the hole, with the Cargo Bay open, and some salvage droids standing by. If I can, I'll drop the Dropship on his deck. If not, I'll try and drop it where a salvage droid can pick it up safely."
"Confirmed."
Another trolley took me directly to an Epee standing at the entrance to a launch tube, where a repair droid was still working on the underside. I ran up the stairs next to it, and buckled myself into the seat, bringing up the systems.
"Jane, put the locations of the Dropship and the three giant suits on the HUD please."
"Confirmed."
"I want Melissa docked up here so she's out of the way."
"Confirmed."
There was movement as the Epee was pushed into the Launch Tube, and I waited for the door behind to close, and the outer door to open. At last, I had a green light to launch, and I punched it. Once clear of the hull, I pushed the speed slider to full, and angled down.
On the way down, Jane pulsed me a control program for the grav sled. It had a simple enough toggle, being either on or off. It also had one other option I hadn't thought of, but which I suddenly realized might be essential.
I screamed past Custer, which was heading back to the planet now, punching through the atmosphere as fast as the Epee could get me there. Only when I was down to ten thousand meters did I slow up, aiming to come to a hover immediately over where the Dropship was supposed to be.
I overshot, which considering how fast I'd been going down wasn’t really surprising, but I was losing time I didn’t have.
I brought the Epee to a stop over the cavern, and let her settle down, coming to a hover about five meters up. I turned the ship so it was pointing up the slope.
I toggled on the grav sled. Immediately rocks and earth leapt at me from all directions. Before anything could hit the ship, I goosed it forwards and upwards, pulling all the earth along behind me. Two thirds of the way up the slope, I turned the gravity off, and all the earth fell away. But it didn’t stay where it landed, beginning to slide back down to where it had come from. I hovered over the front of the moving earth, changed the sled to push gravity instead of pull it, and the earth suddenly stopped, and compacted into a semi-solid wall.
Turn off, flip back to pull mode, back to the Dropship position, and I did it again, dropping the earth beyond the wall I'd made. This time metal was visible.
I dropped right down until the sled was almost touching the protruding ship, turned the gravity back on, and immediately goosed the thrusters to punch the Epee upwards as fast as I could. For a moment I thought it wasn’t going to work, the ship and all the earth around it was too heavy for the Epee, but the Dropship came clear of the earth, and we shot upward. The bird showed me a funnel of earth following me up. I didn’t have long before I'd be carrying too much weight.
Custer was nearby, and I pulled the Epee around towards her, trying to judge how high above the Cargo Bay deck I needed to fly in, in order to slide the Dropship in without too much of a drop.
At the last moment, I knew it wasn’t going to work. The standard airlock wasn’t high enough for both ships.
"George, turn Custer on her side."
"F.A.B."
"Stow that crap! Get it done!"
The Epee was starting to red line now. It was carrying a huge load, being added to all the time as loose earth on the surface was pulled up to join what I’d pulled out of the hole.
Custer rotated, as if in slow motion, and I lined up to head in
as soon as she was far enough over.
"Now," said Jane.
I goosed the speed thruster as much as I dared, and the Epee and its burden shot in through the airlock. The second I passed inside, I pulled the speed slider to stop, and turned off the grav. The Dropship dropped less than a meter, sideways to me, and skidded across the deck, earth and rocks going in all directions.
I turned the Epee around and shot back outside, where earth and rocks were dropping like some kind of earth rain. I headed back to the hole.
"Anyone missing from the Dropship?"
"Yes," said Jane. "Alana and Aline were outside in combat suits."
"Put probable positions on the HUD please. How are those in the Dropship?"
"Confirmed. Uninjured. But it was close for Grace and Annabelle, who were both almost out of life support. Team Two are digging them out now."
Rinse and repeat, I thought to myself.
Down I went to where the two combat suits were thought to be. Hover, turn on grav, shoot forward pulling earth and rocks, and lay them behind the wall. No combat suits. I did it again. And again. The problem was, I didn’t want to draw too much earth each time, in case I merely buried them again someplace else.
Fourth time was the charm, and as the cloud of earth was settling, I saw the shapes of two combat suits among them. I hovered above them, and came down far enough for them both to scramble over and grasp hold of the edge of the grav sled. There were no coms, but the fact they could move, told me they were both ok.
I took the Epee back out of the hole and over to Custer, where once inside the Cargo Bay, I let them drop easily to the deck on their sides. As I was turning to shoot out again, both of them stood and waved to me. I was too busy to wave back.
The urgency was now a lot less. The twins and BA had much longer life support capability, and I knew where they were. I hovered over the place where BA was entombed, turned on the grav, and shot upwards. The bird showed me the earth following me up, and the combat giant coming out of the ground. I turned off the grav immediately, and BA staggered and fell, earth and rocks pelting down on her. She regained her feet as I again hovered down over her, and without needing to be told, she grabbed hold of the sled. I goosed us up a lot easier this time, and very soon was laying her down on the deck inside Custer. She promptly fell over as she let go, given Custer's internal gravity was ninety degrees around from the way I’d brought her in.
Hunter Legacy 8: Hero to the Rescue Page 7